Benjamin Fanni (FR, 1985)
Residency period: September 2026
Benjamin Fanni is a French artist and designer based between Paris and Lausanne. Trained at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and later at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, he founded Studio Johnny Brecht in 2009, developing projects in interior design and scenography for the performing arts, cinema, and fashion. Alongside his design practice, he has developed a multidisciplinary artistic practice combining painting, sculpture, music, writing, and performance. Through a conceptual and poetic approach, his work explores the figure of the ghost and seeks to dismantle the mythologies that shape our relationship to the invisible. His work has been exhibited in France, Belgium, and Switzerland, and in 2021 he received the Talent and Creativity Grant awarded by Casino Barrière de Montreux.
At La Becque, Benjamin Fanni will continue the development of Feu Turfu Térébenthine, an ongoing series of sound sculptures exploring ritual, memory, and the ecology of artistic production. Combining improvised post-religious requiems with hybrid sculptural assemblages made of natural materials and technological objects, the project examines the tensions between low-tech and high-tech, the industrial and the organic, the visible and the invisible. During his EXECAL residency, Fanni will experiment with new methods of construction and spatial composition, creating ritual sound environments that respond to the landscape of La Becque. Through these works, he investigates how music, sculpture, and light can evoke the presence of an unseen collective and transform space into a site of contemplation and shared experience.