KABRALA: Ai Huang's photographic exhibition at La Lison Gallery in Paris

La Lison gallery hosts KABRALA, Ai Huang's first solo exhibition in France, running from September 3 to October 10, 2026. Located in Paris's 10th arrondissement, this series of silver-gelatin self-portraits explores the body, identity, and the transformations of images produced in the darkroom.

In Paris, the La Lison gallery presents KABRALA, a show dedicated to photographer Ai Huang, running from Thursday, September 3 to Saturday, October 10, 2026. Through a series of silver gelatin self-portraits developed in the darkroom, the Tokyo-based artist examines the body, the photographic material, and the construction of identity. This first solo exhibition in France is hosted at 5 rue Pierre Chausson, in Paris's 10th arrondissement.

What is the KABRALA exhibition in Paris all about?

KABRALA gathers self-portraits that don’t aim to reproduce the artist’s features with exact fidelity. Ai Huang treats her own body as a medium she alters through contact with chemicals. The silhouettes emerge, warp, or dissolve as the prints unfold.

The developer, the fixer, the paper and the exposure duration all participate directly in the creation. Ai Huang handles the chemical baths while leaving room for unexpected reactions. Each photograph thus bears the trace of a gesture, of a press, or of the time spent in the lab.

What to see at the KABRALA exhibition

The show presents silver-gelatin prints where the body becomes hard to pin down. Forms fragment, faces lose their stability, and contours shift under the chemical processes. Identity then appears as a moving, fluid concept rather than a fixed representation.

The exhibition also features newer photographs taken with a rechargeable analog camera. These images extend KABRALA's research in a different direction. According to the artist, they engage in a dialogue with the series and rest on the same body language.

The title KABRALA comes from a language Ai Huang began crafting to communicate with her parrot. The term has no formal definition. It points to a form of intimate expression that sits outside everyday speech, more closely tied to sensations, the lines, and the fluid movements of liquids.

Who is the photographer Ai Huang?

Ai Huang lives and works mainly in Tokyo, where she discovers the darkroom in 2021, at the age of 20. After leaving her film studies in Philadelphia, she begins mingling with several photographers from Tokyo’s scene and starts experimenting with silver-based photographic processes.

The encounter with photographer Masato Seto has been pivotal in her trajectory. He provides access to a workspace, materials, and technical know-how. For the KABRALA series, Ai Huang also works with papers and negatives from Japanese photographers such as Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Issei Suda, Daido Moriyama, and Hiroh Kikai.

Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions across Asia, Europe, and the United States. In 2023, she notably presented her creative process at the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. The presentation took the form of a performance during which audiences could observe the artist’s body at work with chemicals on the image.

A First Solo Exhibition in France

The La Lison Gallery pursues a program dedicated to contemporary artists working across photography, drawing, painting, sculpture, and digital art. Based inside the tattoo studio La Bête Humaine, the venue brings together contemporary art, tattooing, and alternative cultures.

An opening reception on Thursday, September 3, 2026, from 7:30 p.m. marks Ai Huang's first solo exhibition in France, inaugurating a practice in which the darkroom becomes both a workshop and a site of artistic experimentation.

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