Hi ! My name is Thomas.  

I am an engineer gone poet and performer.

I was born of French parents in Singapore and grew up all over (Texas, Norway, Egypt, Venezuela). I now live in Paris.

Inspired by the troubadours of Europe’s Dark Ages, I write and perform solo performances about how smartphones are changing how we are human, how we identify, love and relate, generating a new reality where every aspect of human experience is surveilled, encoded, commodified.

A possible title for my work: “Ceci n’est pas une fiction”

A trained industrial engineer, I worked for years as a sustainability consultant in the corporate world. My art practice began with photography in my late twenties, self-taught, leading me to work as studio manager to Nan Goldin for 3 years in Paris before moving to Belgium in 2014 to pursue an MFA in Photography at La Cambre School of Visual Arts (Brussels). This is where I began developing performative works using spoken word and dance as a way of relating to and questioning photography in the era of smartphones and social media.

The beating heart of my art is LA DANSE, a playful and emancipatory movement practice I have been developing since 2014. Accessible to all and easy as ABC, LA DANSE is a space for radical self-expression through movement, a tech-free zone devoted to the pleasure of embodiment in a screen-obsessed society: far from images, far from words. It is this practice which catalyzed the shift of my work from 2D to spatial and performative, driven by a belief that what the world needs now is presence. I currently host LA DANSE 4 times a month in central Paris.

A recipient of the 2017 DanceWEB scholarship at ImpulsTanz festival of contemporary dance (Vienna), I have been working as a performer in various collaborative ventures (Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Cie Mossoux-Bonté, Doris Uhlich...) while developing my own work which has been shown at La Centrale in Brussels (Belgium), Float Gallery in Athens (Greece), the 2018 São Paulo Bienial (Brazil) and the 2021 edition of Jeune Création in Paris (France).

I'm currently working on a collection of poems and short stories while writing poetic copy (as a #brandpoet) for the likes of Chanel, CELINE and Schiaparelli.

write me a sweet word

words@thomasdupal.com