This exhibition explores how the Mediterranean - in its call for freedom and travel, with its cultural diversity, and through the encounters that it provoked at several points in his life - constitutes a magnetic centre in the literary career of Jean Genet, to which he stubbornly returned. It demonstrates how the Mediterranean represented a “great escape” for him. Organised around four themes, each lead to the intersection of a key moment of his life, one of his works and a Mediterranean territory (Le Journal du voleur (The Thief’s Journal) – Spain; Les Paravents (The Screens) – Algeria; Un captif amoureux (Prisoner of Love) – Palestine; the end of his life in Morocco). The exhibition also gathers works that testify to Jean Genet’s sensitivity, to his meetings with visual artists (particularly Alberto Giacometti) and with the world of the arts of the spectacle.

An exhibition on the relationship between Jean Genet and the Mediterranean organised by the Mucem in partnership with the Institut Mémoires de l’Édition Contemporaine (IMEC).