Kourtney Roy – All Inclusive

From February 20 to September 20, 2026, the Cité de l'Économie hosts “Kourtney Roy, All Inclusive,” an exhibition dedicated to the Canadian photographer. Thirty photographs from three series, In Between / Entre Deux Mondes, The Tourist, and Sorry, No Vacancy, occupy the Defrasse Hall of Hôtel Gaillard. Through a dual artistic and scientific approach, the exhibition explores the paradoxes of globalized tourism, between manufactured desires to escape and social realities.

Self-portraits, visual fictions, and tourism non-places Saturated colors, ideal light, deserted beaches, pastel motels. From the first steps in the Defrasse Hall, visitors recognize the imagery of dream tourism. But Kourtney Roy does not replicate these clichés: she undermines them from within. Beneath the alluring surface, the artist inserts cracks, slight shifts, and fictional clues that destabilize perception. Kourtney Roy, Yellow Ferry, 2019, from the series “The Tourist” Photographer and filmmaker born in 1981 in northern Ontario, trained at Emily Carr University in Vancouver and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, she has built for two decades a universe where self-portraiture is a form of exploration. She embodies her characters herself: glamorous vacationers, solitary travelers, tourists perpetually out of sync with their surroundings. Each staging oscillates between elegance and artifice, humor and strangeness. Her approach recalls Cindy Sherman’s, but the playground differs: Roy focuses on the non-places of tourism. Exhibited at Bal, Jeu de Paume, and Rencontres d'Arles, winner of the Swiss Life 4 hands Prize and Pernod Ricard Carte Blanche, she offers a gaze on travel that is both amused and critical. “Kourtney Roy, All Inclusive” at the Cité de l'Économie reveals this personal vision of movement, where visual fiction discreetly shapes reality.

From Mediterranean ferries to the Texas desert, an intimate cartography of travel The “Kourtney Roy, All Inclusive” exhibition is structured around three distinct bodies of work. In Between / Entre Deux Mondes features photographs made in 2022 as part of the Grande Commande Photojournalisme. Welcome to Guernsey, La Détente, Blue Chairs, Arrival in Sardinia: each image captures a suspended moment during a ferry crossing, between two shores, where time expands. 30 photographs exhibited in the Defrasse Hall The Tourist subverts postcard codes. In Yellow Ferry and Ceviche, both from 2019, Roy adopts the stereotypical poses of the ideal holidaymaker. The humor operates through excess: colors are too bright, attitudes too posed. The glamorous figure gradually reveals her artifice, and the tourism dream cracks beneath the surface. Kourtney Roy, Ceviche, 2019, from the series “The Tourist” In Ceviche, Roy pushes tourism postcard codes to their extreme. The title refers to Plaza Ceviche in Cancún, an iconic spot in the hotel zone adorned with monumental marine sculptures. Alone in front of and behind the lens, the artist poses in a cream dress beside a giant starfish, a sculptural element of the urban décor turned oversized fashion accessory through framing. The bright blue sky completes an image too perfect to be real: the scene shifts from familiar to strange. As Del Barrett (founder of Hundred Heroines) analyzes, Roy constructs scenes both familiar and offbeat where artificial objects coexist with rare fragments of reality, creating a tension between allure and unease. The photographer thus subverts the souvenir photo ritual: where vacation snapshots erase disappointments to create beautified memories, Roy reveals the artifice of the device.

Globalized tourism, marketing of escapism, and inequalities of access Sorry, No Vacancy moves the setting to Texas. The 2017 photographs show the artist wandering deserted landscapes, real abandoned film sets. The series reverses the promise of travel: instead of escape, emptiness. The scenography, by Agence PAM, ensures smooth transitions between these three worlds. The Cité de l'Économie not only displays Kourtney Roy's images, it contextualizes them. Educational devices, thematic panels, podcasts, relaxation and reading areas, place tourism within its economic dimension. 10% Share of global GDP generated by the tourism sector The exhibition addresses social inequalities related to travel access, the environmental impact of mass tourism, and the influence of marketing strategies shaping our desires for escape. It is part of the cultural season “Changing the World?”, dedicated by the Cité de l'Économie to globalization issues: migrations, climate disruption, cultural exchanges, and soft power. Kourtney Roy, Sorry, No Vacancy No.10, 2017