In its new exhibition Démones et Déesses, Cannes’ Musée des Explorations du Monde traces 25,000 years of artistic representation of women, from sublime to shockingly realistic depictions.
Throughout human history, the distinction between goddesses and demonesses has never been particularly clear. The same figure who grants fertility might also bring plague; the deity invoked for protection in childbirth could equally destroy armies. A new exhibition at Cannes’ Musée des Explorations du Monde examines this fundamental ambivalence through nearly 100 works spanning 25,000 years of human imagination. “Démones et Déesses : de la vie à la mort” runs through 24 May 2026.
The scope reflects the museum’s established ambition as a leading institution dedicated to showcasing art from around the world and multiple epochs. Numerous prestigious art museums from around the world and private collectors contributed to this exhibition of national significance.
Beginning with figurines carved when humans just started to intentionally create art, and concluding with contemporary artists wrestling with inherited mythologies, the journey maps how societies have visualised feminine power. Six thematic sections across 200 square metres reveal how the female form has served as a vessel for humanity’s deepest hopes and terrors, a subject well suited to an institution founded on principles of cross-cultural exploration.
Prehistory and Antiquity: The Emergence of Female Figures
The exhibition opens with the earliest sculpted representations of the female body, notably the Gravettian figures and the famous ‘Venus of Montpazier’, barely larger than a thumb, and carved from limonite 25,000 years ago by mammoth hunters who roamed the land from the Atlantic to the Urals. These works, often reduced to symbols of fertility, reveal an interpretative complexity that is still debated.
Abri de Laussel, Marquay (Dordogne) Gravettien (environ 25 000 av. J.-C.) Bas-relief par piquetage sur calcaire Musée d’Aquitaine, Ville de Bordeaux © Lysiane Gauthier
Loans from the Republic of Serbia, notably Neolithic figurines from the Vinča culture which have never before been shown in France, enrich this introduction by illustrating the diversity of ritual practices surrounding motherhood and childbirth. Finally, the ancient section shows the continuity of female terracotta figurines, often magical, carrying or nursing a child, thus bearing witness to millennia-old beliefs about maternal protection and fertility.
« Parturiente » Site Grčac-Medvednjak Culture de Vinča (5 300 – 4 500 av. J.-C.)
© Narodni muzej Smederevska Palanka, République de Serbie
The Sacred Feminine Revealed
The figurines of crouching women, often interpreted as protectors of pregnancy or good luck charms, reveal the symbolic power of the female body, between protection and magic. Interpreted as protective talismans, apotropaic objects or symbols of fertility, they embody an intimate and powerful dimension of the female body, sometimes protective, sometimes magical.
This sequence highlights emblematic pieces from the museum’s collections, such as the figurine known as ‘Baubo’, Auguste Rodin’s ‘Nude Woman on Her Back, Legs Apart’, an exceptional loan from the Rodin Museum, and French sculptor Jeanne Vicérial’s contemporary creation, ‘Sex Voto n°12’, which reinterprets ancient ritual motifs with strength and delicacy.
Ancient Orient: Goddesses and Hybrid Powers
The journey continues in Mesopotamia, the heart of one of the world’s oldest religious traditions.
Inanna/Ishtar appears here as a paradoxical deity: goddess of desire, sexuality and eroticism, but also of war, royalty and power. Remarkable loans from the Louvre Museum – tablets, figurines, and the ‘Chariot Apron: Ishtar on a Lion’ – illustrate the iconographic and doctrinal richness of her cult.
« Tablier de char : Ishtar sur lion » El Akhimer = Kish = Oheimir Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités orientales © Grand Palais (musée du Louvre) / Franck Raux
A rare incantatory bowl, on loan from the Museum of World Exploration, presents the enigmatic figure of Lilith, revealing a fundamental ambivalence in representations, as either a demon or a woman in labour.
« Bol d’incantation » Iraq, 4e- 7e siècles Musée des explorations du monde ©Ville de Cannes, Musée des explorations du monde, B. Holsnyder
Egypt: Isis, protective mother and universal figure
Isis occupies a central place in the Egyptian imagination: a devoted wife, protective mother, and magician capable of bringing the dead back to life, she embodies an ideal of feminine power. The loans from the Louvre Museum, including a rare jasper knot of Isis, testify to the diversity of forms in which she was worshipped. The section also looks at the spread of the cult of Isis throughout the Mediterranean world and its modern reinventions, particularly in the 19th century, when she became a universal figure associated with wisdom, nature and knowledge.
Aphrodite/Venus: The Power of Desire
Figurine d’Aphrodite-Isis au miroir Liban (?) Romain Impérial (63 av. J.-C. – 324 apr. J.-C.) Métal Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités orientales, AO 30282 en dépôt au Musée des explorations du monde, Cannes
This sequence highlights the many facets of Aphrodite (or Venus to the Romans), far from the simplified image of the “goddess of love”. A divinity of erotic power, ambivalent, Aphrodite embodies the link between desire, war and social harmony. The works from the Louvre Museum, such as the exceptional ‘Venus de Capitole’, allow us to grasp her symbolic significance.
« Statue du type de la Vénus du Capitole » Italie 100 av. J.-C. – 600 apr. J.-C. Paris, Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines
© Ville de Cannes, Musée des explorations du monde, C. Germain
The 19th Century: Fascination, Orientalism and Demonic Figures
The 19th century rediscovered Antiquity, Prehistory and the Orient, and reinvented women on canvas through the prism of symbolism and romanticism. Impressionists and expressionists, equally fascinated by the female figure, quickly followed. Their work shows how the century oscillated between exaltation of women and fear of their supposed power. The term ‘démone’, the female version of demon, then appeared in the French language, revealing a particularly fertile imagination.
Photo © Ville de Cannes, Mayor David Lisnard at vernissage
20th and 21st Centuries: Feminism, Spirituality and Reinvention
Contemporary and modern artists are exploring new avenues: social criticism, reappropriation of myths, hybridisation of spiritualities. Jane Graverol revisits the figure of Venus with biting irony, while Delphine Diallo offers a mystical vision of ‘Mother Earth’. French artist Samuel Rousseau, whose work contextualizes humanity, was inspired by Vénus de Lespugue which led him to create a contemporary one. The exhibition extends beyond European traditions to include Mami Wata, the water spirit venerated across West and Central Africa. Her representations blend indigenous beliefs with European imagery and Hindu deities, demonstrating how thoroughly cross-cultural the visual language of feminine divinity has become.
(left) « Vénus » Samuel Rousseau, Collection de l’artiste © S. Rousseau
(right) © Ville de Cannes, artist Delphine Diallo
By tracing female power across 25,000 years and six continents, the curators demonstrate that categories we use for gender, divinity, protection, and danger shift constantly: A protective amulet becomes a demon. A fertility goddess rides into battle. What persists is not any stable meaning but rather the human need to project enormous power onto female forms, then wrestle endlessly with what that projection means.
Musée des Explorations de Monde © Ville de Cannes
Visitor Information
Démones et Déesses : de la vie à la mort – through 24 May 2026
Opening hours and contact information | Regular admission €8.50, concessions available | Tickets available on site and online
CONTACT DETAILS
Musée des explorations du monde
Place de la Castre – Le Suquet
06400 Cannes
PHOTO CREDITS
- All photos courtesy Ville de Cannes and as credited
- Lead image Mayor David Lisnard at vernissage, © Ville de Cannes
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