Curated by Nicolas Polli
For the Spring 2026 season, the MBAL is delighted to host the exhibition Pour faire toute chose, il faut une fleur (To Make Anything, You Need a Flower). The project, conceived by Swiss artist, graphic designer, and educator Nicolas Polli, offers a fresh reflection on the intersections between photography, graphic design, and hybrid artistic practices. The exhibition brings together a constellation of Swiss and international creators from diverse disciplines, united by a shared desire to blur traditional boundaries between artistic fields.
The exhibition stems from a need to understand how different areas of the graphic arts interconnect. It will explore the ambivalence of our time—an era defined both by professional hyper-specialization and by an increasing demand for versatility—a tension that lies at the heart of Nicolas Polli’s own career as a photographer, designer, publisher, and teacher.
Through a dynamic and immersive scenography, the exhibition will spotlight a generation of artists whose paths defy conventional categories. It will highlight stories of education and training, cross-disciplinary influences, childhood imagination, as well as contemporary forms of collaboration and knowledge transmission. This ambitious project is deeply rooted in the Swiss artistic landscape while maintaining a resolutely international outlook. It speaks to both art enthusiasts and emerging creators seeking alternative models of practice.
Among the featured artists are Jeanne Jacob, Olga Prader, Aldo Mozzini, Enzo Mari, Ayed Arafah, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Linus Bill & Adrien Horni, Nicolas Polli, Alina Frieske, Ruth van Beek, Erin O’Keefe, Sabine Hess. Conceived as a space for dialogue, the exhibition will showcase photographic works, publications, graphic installations, editorial objects, and personal archives. It will also include a participatory installation for children in the Salle Marie-Anne Calame and the adjacent space.
As a professional working at the crossroads of graphic arts, Nicolas Polli is deeply engaged with these themes. A Swiss photographer, graphic designer, and educator born in 1989, Polli navigates between personal projects and commissioned work. He studied Art Direction at ECAL (École cantonale d’art de Lausanne), where he currently teaches in the Master of Photography and Bachelor in Visual Communication programs. He also regularly teaches in the Camera Arts Bachelor program at HSLU Lucerne. In 2012, he co-founded YET Magazine, a thematic photography journal that ran for 12 issues until 2020. In 2018, he launched his own experimental publishing platform, CIAO Press, focusing on the boundaries between photography and contemporary art. Since 2016, he has run his independent studio, Atelier CIAO, dedicated primarily to editorial design and still-life photography. A recipient of the Swiss Design Award in both 2018 and 2020, Nicolas Polli has been an artist-in-residence at Atelier Robert in Biel/Bienne since 2021.
