It’s a political, vital intranquillity that drives me in an attempt to keep the Earth from rotating. In this title, taken from the text Dans le sommeil d’un nouveau-né (In the sleep of a newborn baby) that Laura Vazquez composed for the exhibition, I feel an injunction to act: wake up, don’t close your eyes. There’s no time. No time to let history be written without me, without us. The origin of this exhibition lies in the observation of a missing voice, of absent representations, of the gap and the collective lapse of memory. And it’s the shared desire to see it as a space for fiction with real potential. Here, the stories of minority communities, often erased or invisibilized by dominant narratives, are reinvested through works that breathe new life into silent voices.

Rewriting, parody and sampling offer a vast field for experimentation and play. These practices of image or gesture production invite us to trick dominant or normative narratives into saying what they don’t say in the first place. By attacking myths in particular, the artists create new worlds on ground that has been ploughed a thousand times over. Or sometimes, they invent entirely new ones. They hybridize dominant figures with marginalized histories to generate counter-spaces for resistance and transformation.

The motif of loss –as well as of fragment– persists at the very heart. History is fragmented, and memory partial. The exhibition invites us to trace links between past and present, and to embrace forgetfulness with open arms, as catalysts of imaginaries and virtualities. A temporal collision that is essential for releasing new perspectives and creating the tidal wave that will allow us to start all over again.

This exhibition takes place in two locations, at almost the same time, with the same artists. It sets out a principle of experimentation, reaffirming that the exhibition as form and discourse is a space for testing. It invites the public to mentally rearrange each of the two proposals as they wish, and to consider the variants as potential trajectories.

By putting marginalized voices back at the center, by giving strength and autonomy to their discourses, particularly through works that propose protocols to be appropriated and reproduced by oneself, the exhibition reminds the public of its power and its potential to act, as a producer of knowledge, memories and representations beyond institutional spaces. It calls for a redefinition of the collective memory to pave the way for futures to be written.

Karin Schlageter

The exhibition takes place at 40mcube (Rennes) and at Mécènes du Sud (Montpellier)
40mcube – 48, avenue Sergent Maginot – 35000 Rennes – Exhibition: February 1st – April 12, 2025
Mécènes du Sud – 13, rue des Balances – 34000 Montpellier – February 13 – May 10, 2025

¡Viva Villa!

¡Viva Villa! is the event for French artistic residencies abroad. This innovative program is the result of collaboration between Casa de Velázquez (Madrid, Spain), Villa Albertine (USA), Villa Kujoyama (Kyoto, Japan) and Villa Medici (Rome, Italy).

Born in 2016 as a festival, ¡Viva Villa! has evolved into a real launching platform for artists, promoting networking and enhancing their post-residency careers. Since 2023, ¡Viva Villa! has supported the production and dissemination of contemporary art through a nationwide program of events. Through this program of support for contemporary artistic production and diffusion, ¡Viva Villa! co-produces cultural events that showcase artists’ careers after their residencies.

For the 2024-2025 season, ¡Viva Villa! is rolling out across France with 13 events involving over 80 artists who have spent time in one of the four residencies abroad. Alongside this program, each year the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris hosts a major professional event bringing together artists and researchers from the four residencies.

With the support of the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, the Académie des Beaux-Arts, the Région Sud, the Institut français, the Fondation Bettencourt Schueller, the Fondation Roederer and Ardian.