Ivorian artist Nuits Balnéaires has been named the 2025 laureate of Latitudes, an international photography programme from the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès in partnership with the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson and New York’s International Center of Photography. The announcement was made November 11 in Paris during Paris Photo week.
The Grand-Bassam-based artist receives a €40,000 grant to produce Eboro, a series drawing from the cosmological traditions of the N’zima and Agni-Bona peoples. In this metaphysical framework, Eboro designates both the origin point of humanity and the liminal threshold through which the immaterial self passes upon death—returning to ancestors to account for one’s earthly existence.
The series was produced along the Senegalese and Ivorian coastlines, with research support from RAW Material Company in Dakar.
Eboro opens at ICP New York on January 29, 2026, running through May 4 under the artistic direction of David Campany. The exhibition will be presented alongside Radio Ballast by François-Xavier Gbré, the inaugural Latitudes laureate—marking the first time both Ivorian recipients show together. The work travels to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris from May 20 to October 4, 2026, curated by director Clément Chéroux, before concluding in Abidjan in 2027. A companion film and bilingual publication co-edited by Atelier EXB and the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès will accompany the project.
Born Kouamé Aka Aboubakhr Thierry in Abidjan, Nuits Balnéaires works across photography, film, and poetry. His practice investigates spiritual continuity and collective memory along the Gulf of Guinea, with particular attention to the N’zima Kôtôkô community of Grand-Bassam, where he has been based since 2019. Previous series include The Power of Alliances (2021), examining the symbolic heritage of Grand-Bassam’s seven founding families, and Scent of Appolonia (2021).
His work has been shown at Art X Lagos, 1-54 Paris at Christie’s, FNB Art Johannesburg, and the Contact Photography Festival in Toronto. He is a former recipient of the World Press Photo Foundation’s West Africa Visual Journalism Fellowship and a 2020 Goethe-Institut/Prince Claus Fund grant for cultural responses to climate change. In 2025, he was also selected for the Institut Français du Bénin’s Inspiration Bénin residency.