For the past four years, I have worked as general coordinator and curator of Societies, a non-profit artistic platform based in Paris and founded by Jérôme Poggi in 2004. Societies aims to empower the abilities of all community members who wish to interact in the art scene and make art together. Rather than new audiences, Societies wants to foster the emergence of new actors, encouraging them to take part actively in today’s art economy. Societies implements the Nouveaux commanditaires program, initiated and supported by the Fondation de France, enabling any group of individuals who wishes to do so, and provided they can justify its need, to commission a contemporary artist to produce a work of art that serves a collective interest.
As of January 2020, I have been appointed curator-in-residency at Maison populaire, in Montreuil. Maison populaire is a community centre founded in 1966 and dedicated to popular education and the arts. Maison populaire welcomes more than 2500 members each season from all ages to learn, experiment, and organize together. The art centre of Maison populaire gathers local audiences and members around year-long thematic proposals made by resident curators. In 2020, and with the collaboration of its team, I will unfold a cycle of three exhibitions alongside public events and editorial projects focusing on queer artistic practices, inviting emerging international artists to this vibrant community.
Recent pandemic-related events compelled us to find ways to relate differently towards each other and to the world around us. We are currently witnessing the global need within art community to re-connect, to form another dimension of social cohesion and interaction, where response to ongoing inequity in the field of art is needed more than ever. In reaction to that, as well as to persisting precariousness, verticality, and the imposed logics of productivism and competitiveness that characterize the art system, we launched a collective initiative and a call for solidarity named curatorial hotline. We devote several hours of our time per week to video calls with emerging artists, offering them theoretical guidelines, practical advice and maintaining human contact. Book an appointment here.