This exhibition honours Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000), a woman whose extraordinary career took her from Austria to the studios of Hollywood, made her the most beautiful woman in the world, a glamorous actress, a decadent star, and the inventor of Wi-Fi, but also an artist, whose painting and drawing practice is not very well known.

Through this exhibition project, conceived with the artist Nina Childress, “Hedy Lamarr – The Strange Woman” invites twelve artists to share their visions of this exceptional woman.  In keeping with the domestic architecture of La Galerie, the exhibition’s design paints a portrait of this “strange woman”, intertwining existing objects (photographs, paperbooks, souvenirs, and more) with works borrowed or produced for the occasion.

Hedy Lamarr’s impact on our collective imagination is put into context, with ideas opening up a wide panorama, from Vienna to Hollywood, even Noisy-le-Sec: decorative arts, iconography, a form of queer aesthetics, technology, fetishism, etc. From painting to video, and including photography and sculpture, each artist focuses on one aspect of the life of Hedy Lamarr, keeping alive the flame of this atypical icon, cultivating the memory of her unknown destiny.