The Bass Museum of Art features (LA)HORDE: Heureux sous son ombre until 27 April, 2025 and to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach.

The exhibition’s title is a nod to Bondy’s eighteenth-century municipal motto Heureux sous son ombre, or “Happy under its shadow.” Referring to the township’s origins near the forest of the same name, the motto was adopted to rehabilitate the image of a region once plagued by highwaymen and banditry. (LA)HORDE’s sculpture HEUREUX SOUS SON OMBRE (2024), presented alongside the video, similarly acknowledges culturally demarcated spaces of threat and civilisation, with ideas about society that consistently emerge in politically constructed forms. Nearby the sculpture Ghost Light, The Bass, Miami (2024), echoes this call to alleviate collective anxiety, alluding to the theater tradition of placing a utility light onstage after hours to ensure the safety of personnel in a darkened theater (or, superstitiously, to keep the ghosts’ company).

The multidisciplinary collective (LA)HORDE was established in 2013 by artists Arthur Harel, Jonathan Debrouwer, and Marine Brutti in France. On display at The Bass in (LA)HORDE’s debut exhibition in the United States, the trio, who are directors of the Ballet de Marseille, challenges the limits of classical dance to investigate how bodies are portrayed in public spaces, social networks, objects, and onstage. The show is a must-see.