Inducted into the Académie des beaux-arts, Valérie Belin entrusted the creation of her sword to the skilled craftspeople at Maison Cartier. A stroke of genius that crowns a career worth looking back on. A graduate of the fine arts schools of Versailles and Bourges, she also holds a master’s degree in art philosophy. Initially influenced by minimalist and conceptual trends, she later devoted herself to photography, exploring light, matter, and the “body” of things and beings, as well as their representations, through photographic series. Her works are exhibited and collected worldwide. Winner of the Pictet Prize in 2015, she was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2017. She has had solo exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu in 2017, and presented a series at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London in 2019. In keeping with tradition, the visual artist wanted it to feature a tagline. “The Girl Who Never Died,” the title of one of her major works, is also a tribute to her collage creations, which spanned her entire career. The diamond-encrusted star, the guard studded with cultured pearls, the Damascus blade, the pop typography reminiscent of the neon signs of 1950s Americana, the white mother-of-pearl and the gadrooned metal: everything majestically evokes a career marked by innovation.