CULTURE Release day, reading-performance and exhibition

It is time to see the restitution of the companionship residence of Colombe Boncenne, author, and Leïla Nagel Hamed Abdelouahab, who graduated in June 2025 from Esban at the university hospital for rehabilitation, rehabilitation and addiction of the Nîmes University Hospital at Grau-du-Roi.

A medical team writes a health report; constants are taken, a temperature recorded, a treatment prescribed. Leïla Nagel Hamed Abdelouahab and Colombe Boncenne certainly wore blouses, but as a stethoscope, they had paper, pens, a recorder, a camera, and the only remedies were words and images.

Like reporters who can work in immersion, they tried to blend into the setting in order to take the pulse of the daily life of the service. Attentive to sharing and collective creation, they built the railway of a newspaper with the patients and the teams on site.

Attention was paid to material things (objects, furnishings…) as well as immaterial things (sensations, words…) in a concern for resonance with the living and non-living environment. Listen, see, look, feel, notice, they kept watch.

This research and creation companionship residency is an interactive, inclusive system set in its context. It was built as part of the Gardener project and is carried out in partnership with the university hospital for rehabilitation, rehabilitation and addiction of the University Hospital of Nîmes, located in Grau-du-Roi. Between February and March 2026, Colombe Boncenne, author, and Leïla Nagel Hamed Abdelouahab, artist who graduated in 2025 from Esban, set up a co-creation space with patients.

Release day questions our outlook on a return to “normal” life. How do the images, words and sensations that we were confronted with during our time in hospital register? Colombe Boncenne and Leïla Nagel Hamed Abdelouahab have developed a reading/performance in the form of an exchange on this subject. Reading-performance on Tuesday May 12 at 6:30 p.m. in the ésban exhibition rooms.

Release day, it’s what remains in the cameras, in the films, in the notebooks, what the patients shared, what was captured from the threshold of their room. Through this exhibition, the photographs of Leïla Nagel Hamed Abdelouahab show the surveyed spaces, faceless portraits and details of the inside and outside of the addictology department of the Grau-du-Roi hospital.

Exhibition visible from May 13 to 15, 2026. By appointment only through communication@esba-nimes.fr