Polynesia 66, carnet de constellations

In 1966, Emmanuel Caye, a young veterinarian, went to serve his military duty on the atoll of Reao with the mission of studying the marine life. That same year, the French army began nuclear testing in the Pacific. Decades later, both Véronique and her father developed numerous skin cancers that left scars on their bodies.

Through private and official documents, photographs, and contemporary or archival films—some created by the artist, others collected—Polynesia 66 is an investigation into the persistence of nuclear history. The project explores the hypothesis of a link between the health issues experienced by the artist and her father and the radiation present on these atolls. For Véronique Caye, the skin becomes a map, where the scars form the traces of an atomic cartography that persists to this day. From the intimacy of wounds to the spectacle of nuclear explosions, to the bureaucratic labyrinths the artist must navigate, this project poetically highlights the geopolitical stakes and the marks history leaves on microhistory.

The images of the stunning landscapes that punctuate this journal dialogue with the first-person texts written by the artist, recounting her journey as she searches for traces of her father’s presence in Polynesia. Often associated with a paradisiacal iconography, these lands here reveal the marks of radioactivity, where beauty and unease coexist.

The constellation of Orion runs through the project: the artist wishes to replicate its shape on her scars, as the names of the nuclear tests conducted in 1966 correspond to the stars in this constellation—one of the few visible from both hemispheres. From the celestial macrocosm to the cellular microcosm, the various documents collected in this travel journal expose a nebula of political, ecological, medical, and personal significance.

Marta Ponsa, February 2026

Véronique Caye is a director, stage director, author, and photographer. She graduated from the University of Paris VIII and studied film direction at La Fémis (Paris, 2011). In 2015, she joined the College-Teatro of the Venice Biennale under the direction of Romeo Castellucci.

She explores various forms of image-making: documentaries, installations, videos, performances, and photography. Her work questions the role of the image in contemporary society. “The entire artistic endeavor of Véronique Caye revolves around one obsession: the vera icona, the ‘true image,’ the image that becomes the truth.”

Her films and performances have been presented at prominent venues such as the Institut du Monde Arabe, IRCAM Centre Pompidou, ENS Paris-Saclay, Théâtre de la Colline, CNES Observatory of Space, and the Festival d’Avignon, among others. In 2021, she published Vera Icona, Abécédaire de l’image scène with Éditions Hématomes, and during a retrospective of her films at the Galerie Analix Forever in Geneva, the book Horizon was dedicated to her by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, also published by the same editions. Recently, she co-authored the essay Manifeste pour un érotisme existentiel with Barbara Polla, published by BSN Press (2024), Dar Al Saqi Beirut (Arabic translation in 2025), and ADA, au-delà de l’image with Éditions Hématomes (2025).

Véronique Caye is represented by Galerie Analix Forever in Geneva.