Would you like to host a collective exhibition about the issues of the Ocean?
The Great Expedition continues its journey
For more than two decades, the Tara Ocean Foundation has opened its research vessel to artists from different horizons. On board, these residencies have become spaces for experimentation, encounter, and creation. From these journeys emerged a constellation of works—photographs, sculptures, soundscapes, films, drawings—that probe the environmental, social, and poetic questions shaping the future of the Ocean.
In 2024, The Great Expedition, the first major retrospective of this artistic adventure, took place at Le Centquatre-Paris. Forty-three artists, each marked by their time at sea, showcased their works in a collective exploration of the Ocean.
Structured around four thematic pillars —Landscapes, Life, Pollution, and Senses—the exhibition offers a multifaceted perspective on the Ocean, highlighting the complex interconnections between marine ecosystems and human activity. The artists’ travel diaries provide an intimate counterpoint to those works, and offer an insight into daily life at sea.
Nearly 35,000 visitors embarked on this voyage over three months.
Now, the exhibition continues to travel—reshaping itself with each new destination, with some exclusive additions along the way, like Jean Jullien’s monumental installation, created for the French Pavilion at the Osaka World Expo in May 2025, or new photographic works by Nicolas Floc’h, after his residency aboard Tara Polar Station in the Arctic in summer 2025.
Flexible and ever-evolving, The Great Expedition transforms according to each space, each budget, each community. Every iteration is created in dialogue with curators, scenographers, and local teams, ensuring that the exhibition resonates deeply with the territory it inhabits.
After its debut at Le Centquatre-Paris, a selection of works travelled to Villa Arson for Becoming Ocean (with the TBA21 Foundation), and later to the inaugural FLOW festival in Occitanie, organized by The Eyes Publishing. A new edition, featuring twelve artists, will open in Lorient this February.
We invite museums, art centers, and cultural institutions to join us on this collective journey—to help shift the perspectives on the Ocean and build a new relationship with our environment.
→ Let’s imagine your version of the exhibition together.
