The Many Lives and Deaths of Louise Brunet brings together several hundred works of art, objects and archival documents, covering diverse geographies over several millennia. From Cranach to 1960s industrial design, and ancient funerary stele to 18th century Japanese Samurai armour, the exhibition draws on the collections of local and foreign institutions. It exhumes trans-historical narratives of fragility and resistance and confronts them with a diversity of works by the biennale's invited artists.

Departing from the context of Lyon, the exhibition is designed as a retelling of the obscure 19th century story of Louise Brunet, a silk spinner from the Drome, who after joining the revolution of the Canuts (silk weavers) in 1834, embarked on an arduous journey of self-reinvention, which ended in the Lyon-owned silk factories of Mount Lebanon. Louise Brunet is portrayed as an elusive figure, part real, part fictional, that appears in different guises, in various places, at several moments in history.