Corps de masse is a project that grew out of workshops held at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Saint-Denis, housed in a former Carmelite convent. Halida Boughriet'ssed a well-defined protocol to film the town's inhabitants, who were invited to gather together, embrace and form one body in front of the camera, before slowly separating. The scenes take place in the museum's rooms, formerly the nuns' cells, cramped spaces that force the artist to use tight framing. The united bodies, bathed in natural light, unconsciously echo the postures of the subjects of the classical paintings on display. Only the rustling of the fabrics and the rubbing of the floor are perceptible. Fragile, ephemeral moments, these encounters reveal the nature of the human bonds that give each of us our strength. Bodies and hair mingle, merge, then separate in a calm, soothing movement. At the end of her residency, Halida Boughriet produced a video and a series of photographs that are now on show at the MAC/VAL, as part of an invitation to join the collection's current tour, devoted to painting. Halida Boughriet'ssition and chiaroscuro of the images in Corps de masse give this series an undeniable pictorial quality. Halida Boughriet's freewheeling images, set between past and present, present us with a new kind of scene, imbued with humanism.