Verena Paravel

Verena Paravel was in residence at LUMA Arles from September to December 2025.

Verena Paravel (b. 1971, Neuchâtel, Switzerland) is a French filmmaker, artist, and anthropologist. Engaging the limits of perception, her practice explores human and more-than-human worlds through new aesthetic, political, and sensory forms of image and sound. Blending cinematic experimentation with ethnographic, ecological, and philosophical inquiry, she creates immersive works that challenge conventional boundaries.

Paravel’s films have screened at major international festivals including Cannes, Venice, Berlin, Locarno, Toronto, and the New York Film Festival. Works such as Foreign Parts (2010, with J.P. Sniadecki), Leviathan (2012), Caniba (2017), Somniloquies (2018), and De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022), with Lucien Castaing-Taylor, have received widespread critical acclaim for their radical approach and have been honoured with numerous international awards.

Her moving image works have been exhibited in prestigious institutional contexts, including MoMA, (New York), Tate Modern (London), the Whitney, Venice and Shanghai Biennales, Documenta 14 (Athens/Kassel), and the Okayama Art Summit.

Since 2006, Paravel has been affiliated with Harvard University’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, where she has taught and developed collaborative research-based filmmaking practices. She has served as Visiting Professor at Harvard and taught masterclasses at Sciences Po (Paris). She has also been guest artist at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains (France) and ECAL (Switzerland).