September 2026
Lucile Soussan
- Drawing
- Painting
- Photography
- Visual arts
- Tara Coral
Blue Mangroves
Lucile Soussan is a French artist, born in Paris in 1990. She graduated in 2021 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (Éric Poitevin’s studio), and also trained in scientific drawing at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris; she was an artist-in-residence at the Casa de Velázquez in 2024–2025. Her work has been exhibited notably at the Casa de Velázquez, the Académie des Beaux-Arts (finalist for the Weill Drawing Prize, 2025), the Institut Français in Madrid, and the Galerie Daniel Blau in Munich (winner of the ‘3 under 30’ prize, 2020). She is represented by Galerie Dilecta.
Lucile Soussan
Her artistic practice
Lucile Soussan’s practice, which includes print-making, drawing, painting and photography, explores the points of contact between art and science, with a particular focus on understanding and conserving tropical environments. As a diver, she places immersion at the heart of her approach, whether underwater or in the tropical forest: her drawings and prints take shape right alongside the reefs, tree canopies and species she observes on site. This direct relationship with the environment, be it marine or forest, shapes a body of work in which the artistic gesture arises from the physical experience of the place. She favours time-consuming traditional techniques, the slowness of which echoes the geological timescales that run through her work.
She has travelled throughout Peru, Malaysia, South Africa, Colombia, Japan and Madagascar, as well as Réunion, where she lived for two years, drawing inspiration for her work from direct contact with the landscapes and the scientists she met there. Islands remain her favourite setting, in this endless dialogue between land and sea. A dialogue that she will continue in 2026 aboard the schooner Tara, whilst in residence in Palau for the Tara Ocean Foundation. There, she will explore the subtle continuities within the spectrum of marine ecosystems: seagrass beds, mangroves, lagoons and reefs.
Her project
Lucile Soussan will set sail aboard the schooner Tara for an artist-in-residence programme in the waters off Palau, an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean. She is heading there to explore the ‘blue mangroves’ – those fringes where mangrove trees send their roots right down to the edge of the coral reefs. Two worlds that interact with the rhythm of the tides. There are few places where mangroves and coral come into such close contact: it is in this proximity that Lucile will seek to uncover the links that, beneath the surface, unite the forest and the ocean.
As discreet sentinels of the coastline, mangroves absorb the force of cyclones, slow erosion, filter the water and store vast reserves of carbon in their roots. Beneath their intertwined roots, they also provide shelter for the juveniles of many marine species, which grow there safe from predators before moving on to the lagoon and the reef. A nursery on which the life that inhabits the corals depends, in part. What the project highlights is another way of protecting the reefs: by first taking care of what borders them, shelters them and nourishes them. On board, Lucile will dive, sketch and take photographs to build up a body of research from which she will draw inspiration to create her final works once back in her studio.
Discover some of her creations inspired by life aboard Tara:
Coming soon