For its 12th series of exhibitions, L’Appartement–Espace Images Vevey splits in two. One side hosts Lea Sblandano, winner of the 2024 IMAGES VEVEY × ECAL Award, who presents Neijuan, an installation exploring identities in flux, where reality slides into the virtual. The other side features Nova by Lena Amuat & Zoë Meyer, a duo rephotographing scientific objects turned into poetic artefacts. On one side, digital experimentation, avatars, and connected emotions. On the other, the rigour of the laboratory, academic thought, and material memory. Two complementary approaches, confronting past and future, the tangible and the timeless, poetry and fantasy, each in their own way questioning how we see, know, and project ourselves into the world.

LE COULOIR

Neijuan, a Chinese slang term meaning “involution”, describes a retreat into oneself, a symptom of a society growing ever faster and more competitive, where youth oscillates between adulthood and stagnation. Through a documentary and collaborative approach, Lea Sblandano follows people she met online, in forums, video games, or chat rooms. These virtual spaces become arenas of transformation where alternative identities emerge beyond physical norms. In Le Couloir, she introduces this shifting world through photographs that blend portraits and urban landscapes, alternating fragments of reality and staged scenes. Both intimate and confined, the space acts as a threshold between two realms, opening windows onto the outside while initiating immersion into the fascinating universe of Neijuan.


LE SALON

Le Salon presents the book Neijuan, created by Lea Sblandano as part of her graduation at ECAL. This dummy, awarded the 2024 IMAGES VEVEY × ECAL Prize, offers a sensitive entry into her universe. It brings together key images of her research: portraits, avatars, urban landscapes, and interiors. Carefully staged, these photographs blur the boundary between real and virtual. Some figures appear human, others from video games or digital worlds, set against Asian megacities where light and architecture intensify strangeness. As a young woman, Lea also confronts troubling realities of sexualization and fetishisation in these spaces of fantasy. A silent, life-sized avatar appears in the room, an ambiguous figure between mental image and digital extension. Le Salon evokes the bedroom as both an intimate refuge and a stage for self-projection.

LE CINÉMA

In Le Cinéma, Lea Sblandano unfolds the third part of her immersive installation, conceived as a mental space charged with images. Nine screens on a metal-structure display continuous excerpts from Neijuan: videos, webcam views, avatars, and moments of intimacy intertwine into a dense, shifting visual landscape. Among them appears Kei, a real person and virtual flatmate in Japan, almost constantly connected to a chatroom since the pandemic. He is shown as Lea first encountered him: through a separate screen, suspended between wakefulness and permanent connection. The interface becomes a liberating link, while deepening the distance from the tangible world. Le Cinéma brings together the key themes of the artist’s practice: connected solitude, fragmented presence, and multiple identities. This live connection reminds us that Neijuan remains in perpetual motion, anchored in an always-online world.