Edge of the City: perspectives by Nina Berman and Ismail Alaoui Fdili

This exhibition is part of the annual Nature in the City conference organized by the Urban School. The 2025 edition focuses on urban nature at the margins. In resonance with the discussions and reflections developed during this scientific event, the Institute for the Arts & Creation is hosting this exhibition from December 8 to 12, 2025. Both artists will be present on December 10 at 2 p.m. for a Meet the Artists session — an opportunity to present their work and engage in conversation with the audience.

Edge of the City brings together the works of Nina Berman and Ismail Alaoui Fdili, two artists exploring the fragile balance between destruction and regeneration in urban environments. Presented as part of Nature in the City Annual Event 2025, the exhibition reflects on urban margins as sites where human action and environmental transformation intersect, and where the consequences of development and care are made visible.

In her Bronx Gardens series, Nina Berman documents community gardens that have transformed abandoned lots in the Bronx into vibrant green sanctuaries. Her images highlight acts of collective care that redefine the possibilities of urban life.

In contrast, Ismail Alaoui Fdili’s Under Destruction series focuses on the erasure of natural and cultural landscapes by construction and development. By printing his photographs on salvaged wall fragments, he turns traces of destruction into material witnesses of urban change and memory.

Together, their works reveal the city’s margins as spaces of transformation — where human intervention and environmental forces coexist, and where the tensions between decay, regeneration, and memory shape the evolving urban landscape.

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator. Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma. She started her photographic career in 1988 as an independent photographer working on assignment for the world’s major magazines. She covered a range of issues, from women under siege during war in Bosnia and Afghanistan, to domestic issues of criminal justice, reproductive rights, and political process.

Ismail Alaoui Fdili is a Moroccan artist born in 1992 in Casablanca, Morocco. A graduate of isdaT in Toulouse and ENSAPC in Cergy, he went on to pursue film studies at École Kourtrajmé under the mentorship of Ladj Ly. His work focuses on the margins and on people living in the space between social inclusion and exclusion. His playgrounds are transitional spaces such as landfills and parking lots.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Gérard B. Lambert Foundation.

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