2024
WHO PUT BELLA IN THE WITCH ELM?
Group show at Ygrec-ENSAPC art Centre
Opening saturday 30 November, 5 pm to 9pm
From 4 December 2024 to 18 January 2025
With: Mathis Collins, Raphaël Delannoy, Léontine Deslandes, Sveva Diolaiti, Gral et Isadora Guzniczak.
Curator: Gral
[this hasn’t been translated yet]
Le Centre d’art Ygrec donne ses clés à un groupe d’artistes et étudiant·es issu·es de l’ENSAPC pour construire un projet de A à Z : iels assument à la fois la création de leurs œuvres, le commissariat, le montage et la médiation de l’exposition.
Celle-ci a pour origine un fait divers : au creux d’un arbre planté au milieu de la campagne anglaise du Worcestershire, le cadavre d’une femme est découvert un matin d’avril 1943. Bientôt, des graffitis anonymes apparaissent sur les murs du village voisin, répétant cette même question un siècle durant : « Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? » (Qui a mis Bella dans l’orme aux sorcières ?) Par le mystère qui les entoure et le contexte rural dans lequel elles se situent, ces inscriptions évoquent les possibilités horrifiques du folklore, point de départ d’une exploration que cette exposition se propose de faire à travers l’héritage artistique du cinéma d’épouvante.
FAIRE CONNAISSANCES
Knowing (each others)
Solo show by Marianne Mispelaëre at Ygrec-ENSAPC Art Centre
In collaboration with Le bureau des heures invisibles (bhi)
18 September to 9 November 2024
From 2020 to 2022, Marianne Mispelaëre led a collective and collaborative project in Marseille through the Nouveaux commanditaires (New Patrons) program : Les langues comme objets migrateurs (Languages as Migratory Objects) (arts outreach – prod. thankyouforcoming). She worked with teachers of French, German and literature, and a scholar in language education. Fourteen classes of youths from the Vieux Port Middle School, René Caillié High School, and Victor Hugo High School, worked with the artist with the support of their educators.
The project started with the question : what does it mean to study in a French public school today as a plurilingual teenager or as a student living in a multicultural environment? Students, aged 11 to 18, inspired, supported, and guided Marianne Mispelaëre in her research. While many of the youths involved in the project were born in France, many of them are plurilingual, and others, newly arrived, are learning French. Together, through the lens of the children’s language practices, they discussed and engaged with questions of plurilingualism, multilingualism, exile, transmission, history, creolization, translation, and identity.
Several works were produced emerging from the complexities of the project. Écrire dedans sa langue (To write “fromwithin” your language) was created as a protocol. Additional works include the film Un œil sur ta langue (An eye on your tongue), the typeface La Marseillaise (The Marseillaise), the protocols Comment vois-tu le monde à travers ta langue? (How do you see the world through your language?), and Être un être traduit (Being a translated being).
IN THE SHADOWS
Group show at Ygrec-ENSAPC Art Center, Gymnase Manouchian, OMJA, Médiathèque Saint-John Perse, Service Municipal Jeunesse.
From the 8th of June to the 9th of September 2024
Opening on the 8th of June from 4pm till 8pm.
With: Madanie, Nadezhda Ermakova, Camille Millerand, Ulises Tapia et Jawarlan Bolo.
The exhibition In the Shadows gathers together photographs by Madanie, Nadezhda Ermakova, Camille Millerand, Ulises Tapia and Jawarlan Bolo. More than 70 images are displayed in 5 different locations: at the Gymnase Manouchian, at the OMJA, in the Médiathèque (Media Library) Saint-John Perse, at the Service Municipal Jeunesse Saint-John Perse, and in the shop window of the Ygrec-ENSAPC Art Center.
From boxing to basketball, pétanque to chess, the exhibition photographs highlight athletes, players, amateurs who train for the sake of it, for self-transcendence, for collective achievement or simply for pleasure.
This exhibition is a tribute to the sports people, the practitioners, the coaches, the sites wardens, and all the people who contribute to the very existence of those sports and activities. The project forms part of the Olympiade Culturelle supported by the Ile-de France Region.
CO(NAÎTRE)
Solo show by Jonathan Potana at the Ygrec ENSAPC Art Center and POUSH
From the 29th of May till the 13th of July 2024
Opening : Saturday 25th of May, 5pm -9pm
Art curation: Guillaume Breton
Co(naître) – Co(generate) is the first solo show by the Reunion artist Johnathan Potana. He presents a set of sculptures, installations and performances over two sites in Aubervilliers: at the Ygrec ENSAPC Art Centre and at POUSH (as part of the group show Nord-Est, Cartographie des Résonnances – North-East, Mapping resonances).
With this double show, the artist has wished to forge a dialogue with the city of Aubervilliers, to work with its materials, objects and waste. Symbolic and real links between the Reunion Island and Aubervilliers are therefore generated, whilst their colonial past is highlighted, as well as the presence that a continuous migration constitutes on its plural identity. However, the constellation of unfolded relationships in this exhibition does not stop at the surface of our planet, it spreads way beyond the terrestrial atmosphere to bring us near what the artist names “cosmic considerations, primal ones devoid of edges and limits”.
Jonathan Potana will simultaneously develop a “living installation” on the 1st of June from 7pm till midnight at the Léon Salagnac Park in Malakoff, following an invitation by the Contemporary Art Centre of Malakoff, for Nuit Blanche 2024.
SANDS OF SELF
Group show at Ygrec-ENSAPC Art Centre
2 – 16 March 2024
Opening March 1, 2024, 6-9pm
Exhibition : Alina Izmailova, Elouan Le Bars, Hanieh Yekta.
Game Design : Ines Bahraoui, Sarah Bernay-Lefrancois, Gesu Chauhan, Maximilien Curtis, Nadia Ermakova, Abhinav Gola, Manon Hernani, Alina Izmailova, Ayush Jacob, Hugo Katzenmayer, Harsh Khandelwal, Elouan Le Bars, Théau Lerma, Xiaowen Ma, Nicolas Martinez, Malone Perrotey, Hima Sadanandan, Alexandre Sadoun, Pierre Saidy, Muskan Taneja, Yixin Tang, Lipika Tiwari, Mrinal Vaibhav, Jingwen Wu, Hanieh Yekta.
Based on a proposal by Mounir Ayache, invited by Guillaume Chevillon and Jeff Guess.
Curator : Guillaume Breton
Sands of self is a collective project in the framework of a joint course offered by Guillaume Chevillon (ESSEC Metalab for Data, Technology & Society) and Jeff Guess (École nationale supérieure d’arts Paris-Cergy) with guest artist Mounir Ayache who proposed to create a video game using Artificial Intelligence in all aspects of production. A group of four ENSAPC students created the exhibition and put the finishing touches on the game.
This project has received government funding managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under the France 2030 future investment program, under reference ANR-17-NCUN-016.
Set in a simulated version of the city of Cergy – to which the students are closely linked – the game revisits the idea of the Ville Nouvelle in an indeterminate future, characterized by the increasing embeddedness of artificial intelligence in all aspects of urban life.
The generative AI models used for the game’s design, programming, soundtrack and narration produce an environment with blurred boundaries, that the player can explore by interacting with an omniscient voice echoing through the exhibition space. The installation extends the game by associating objects found in Cergy – residues of urban metabolism – with recovered fragments of décor, creating a juxtaposition of different narratives.
IMAGES LATENTES
Group Show at Ygrec-ENSAPC Art Centre
January 24th – February 10th 2024
Wed – Sat, 1pm – 7pm
Opening Friday January 20th, 2024, 6pm to 9pm
With: Kenza Belghiti-Alaoui, Marlone Belinga Cleon, Elise Bonnelle, Lou Dalifard, Nadia Ermakova, Gral, Paul Kermarec, Nicolas Lebeau, Gaetane Martinot, Céline Rivalta, Ulises Tapia Garcia, Josephine Thorsby
The exhibition was produced in collaboration with the guest artist Stéphanie Solinas, an invitation by Christian Genty and Jeff Guess (ENSAPC).
What if the proclaimed dematerialization of the contemporary digital photographic image (despite its real substantiality in data centers and other concrete artifacts upon which it rests) led to a renewal of the forms and modalities of the presence of specters that photography has ceaselessly produced since its invention? This is the starting point for these artists, students at the ENSAPC, whose works were developed under the watchful eye of visual artist Stéphanie Solinas. By reviving the materiality of photographic picture-making, these practices assert their relationship, sometimes symbolic and ambiguous, with a history of photographic revelation, the printed object, and chemical and optical processes. The latent image, inscribed by light on silver-based film but still awaiting development, becomes a principle and method for thinking about the manifestation of bodies in an indeterminate space, of inscribing figures in the extended temporality of appearances and, above all, of the power of leaving traces.
