Thomas SAUVIN
トーマス・ソーヴィン
Since 2009, the French collector and artist Thomas Sauvin has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, thus allowing the reconstruction of a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in the country. This unceasingly evolving archive provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past.
Thomas Sauvin won the prize for the Exhibition of the year at Lianzhou Photo Festival in 2013. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Chicago, the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art, and the Guangdong Museum of Art.
Over the past ten years, Thomas has published 15 photo books with the Archive of Modern Conflict (UK), Jiazazhi (CH), Skinnerboox (IT), The M Editions (FR), VOID (GREECE) as well as self-published artist books. His publications have entered the collections of TATE, the V&A, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Pompidou Museum.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2020 - « Until Death Do Us Part » & « World Park », Breda Photo, The Netherlands
2020 - « Kensuke Koike & Thomas Sauvin - No More No Less », Festival Images, Vevey, Switzerland
2020 - « Kensuke Koike & Thomas Sauvin - No More No Less », IMA Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
2019 - « The World Park », Insitut pour la Photographie, Lille, France
2019 - « World Park », Collective exhibition « LOVELOVELOVE: A Journey in LOVE », Today Art Museum, Beijing, China
2019 - « Until Death Do Us Part », Collective exhibition « Probabilité 0.33 », Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Chalon-sur-Saône, France
2018 - « No More No Less » (collab. Kensuke Koike), Salon Approche, Paris, France
2018 - « Until Death Do Us Part », Collective exhibition « Probabilité 0.33 », Marseille Provence 2018, Marseille, France
2018 - « From publications to exhibition », Festival Portraits, Vichy, France
2018 - « On This Day » (collab. Klara Källström & Thobias Fäldt, FG2 Gallery, Gothenburg, Sweden
2017 - « No More No Less » (collab. Kensuke Koike), Guangdong Museum of Art Image Triennial, Guangzhou, China
2017 - Collective exhibition « Autophoto », Fondation Cartier, Paris, France
2016 - « Thomas Sauvin (Beijing Silvermine)», Paris Photo, France,
2016 - « Hand-Colored », Singapore International Photography Festival, Singapore
2016 - « Hand-Colored », Festival Images, Vevey, Switzerland
2016 - « Beijing Silvermine », Promenades photographiques, Vendôme, France
2016 - Collective exhibition “Here’s looking at you », Shanghai Center of Photography (SCOP), China
2016 - « Retrieved », SF Camera works, San Francisco, USA
2015 - « Clap your hands », Hubei Museum of Art, Wuhan, China
2015 - « Until Death Do Us Part + Beauty and the Beast », CAFA, Beijing, China
2014 - « Silvermine + Lunar Caustic + Recycled », Gallery Paris-Beijing, Brussels, Belgium
2014 - « Silvermine: by the water », Festival Images, Vevey, Switzerland
2014 - « Archive State », Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, USA
2014 - « Beijing Silvermine », 4A Center for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia
2013 - « Beijing Silvermine », Salt Yard, Hong Kong
2013 - « Beijing Silvermine », FORMAT Photo festival, Derby, United Kingdom
2012 - « Beijing Silvermine », Singapore International Photo Festival, Singapore
2012 - « Photographic Oddities from the AMC », Caochangdi Photo Festival, Beijing, China
2011 - « Beijing Silvermine », Dali Photo Festival, Dali, China