This homemade website is a partial archive of my work to date. On this page is a selection of current and recent projects that are representative of my research and curatorial interests.

Chaleur Humaine, 2023

The second edition of the Dunkirk Art & Industry Triennial – Chaleur Humaine – looks at how artistic, architectural, design and landscaping practices have addressed the subject of energy, its uses and misuses, and its narrative, critical, and chimerical potential. Comprising works from public collections including the Centre Pompidou and the Centre national des arts plastiques, along with works borrowed or commissioned from artists, the exhibition takes 1972 (the eve of the first oil crisis) as the starting point for a journey through the next five decades.

The theme of energy is deployed through eight chapters to include considerations on extractivism, anticolonialism, productivism, degrowth, anthropogenic landscapes, human and non-human bodies at work, fatigue, sleep and collective resistance. Featuring 250 works by 130 practitioners, including 30 new commissions, Chaleur Humaine is co-curated with Camille Richert, with curatorial assistance from Henriette Gillerot. It is taking place at the Frac Grand-Large Hauts-de-France, the LAAC Museum and in public space until 14 January 2024.

ĝardeno paradizo, 2023

Launching in October, ĝardeno paradizo is a pedagogical, cultural and landscaping project in the city of Sète, set up in partnership with Mécènes du Sud – Montpellier-Sète-Béziers and Habitat Jeunes de Sète et du Bassin de Thau. Working closely with the young residents of Habitats Jeunes, a group of practitioners including artists, designers, horticulturalists, an architect, a chef and a producer have collaborated to rehabilitate the young people’s outdoor spaces in ways that accommodate biodiversity, sociability and physical exercise, through a shade-producing and edible planting design, functional artworks and wellbeing areas made from, or delineated by, refuse and locally-sourced materials.

With: Tiphaine Calmettes, Louis Danjou, Aude Mohammedi-Merquiol, Mr. & Mr., Lisa Ouakil

Alternative to what? Alternative how? A Study of Multi-Public Educational and Cultural Spaces in England since the Late Nineteenth Century, 2022

In autumn 2022, I was awarded my PhD from the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham. My PhD research is dedicated to the study of the foundational years of three organisations started in East London – Toynbee Hall (1884-present), Centerprise (1971-2012), and Open School East (2013-present) – which have combined the trinal functions of school, community centre, and cultural space. Multi-vision, multi-purpose, and multi-public, these organisations deemed themselves alternative, whether through their pedagogical, cultural, and social engagement and practice; their governance model; and/or their conceptualisation and use of architectural space. Core to their mission were their democratic ideals of togetherness and of equality of access to education and culture, along with a preoccupation with developing participants’ agency, rebalancing power relations, and making the experience of education non-alienating and emancipatory.

This study questions how these spaces understood and situated themselves as alternatives and how they enacted their alternativeness. Moving within and beyond the case studies, it examines the qualities, values, and prerequisites of what I have proposed to
name ‘multi-public educational and cultural organisations’. By the same means, it scrutinises
the hurdles associated with the effort to remain alternative with the passing of time and that which comes with it: processes of habituation; temptation or pressure to scale up; ethos-
bending fundraising exercises; long tenure; as well as the plain desire for stability and sustainability.

Sunken Ecologies, 2021

The 2021 edition of Margate NOW festival, Sunken Ecologies, takes on the human-made natural environment and the possible role, participation and responsibility of cultural practitioners in caring for, engaging with, reclaiming or reimagining green spaces. The festival primarily takes place at the Sunken Garden in Westbrook, Margate, a garden landscaped in the early 1930s on the site of a former chalk quarry and under the care of the community group Sunken Garden Society since 2018. All commissioned for the festival, the artworks range from permanent, functional sculptures serving the storing, composting, and sitting needs of the Sunken Garden, to ephemeral or immaterial contributions, such as sculptural and landscape interventions, walks, texts, sounds, films, workshops, and talks.

With: Ama Josephine Budge, Adam Chodzko, Kim Conway, Nicolas Deshayes, Lindsey Mendick, Olu Ogunnaike, Sonia Overall, Christina Peake, Molly Pickle, Holly Slingsby, Francesca Ter-Berg, Shamica Ruddock, Sara Trillo

Photo credit: Adam Chodzko, The green, the flow, the path of the game

The Assembly of Values, 2021

A project co-curated with Cédric Fauq, enquiring about the values that surround the contemporary art sphere, and activating proposals and mechanisms for a fairer, more inclusive and sustainable art world.

The project takes the form of 9 videos interviews available here with English subtitles, and of a performative assembly at Villa Arson, Nice on 8-9 Sept 2021, where we gathered to make concrete proposals to be applied by the project’s commissioner Botox(s), the French contemporary art networks in the Alps and Riviera, in the coming months.

With: Gianmaria Andreetta, Eloïse Bonneviot, Ève Chabanon, Aurélien Catin, Marine Lang, Guillaume Maraud, Noémi Michel, Aude Mohammedi Merquiol, Emilie Moutsis, Laurence Perrillat, Cindy Sissokho, Ramaya Tegegne, Mawena Yehouessi

D·E·VALUATION, 2021

An exhibition following a six-month long workshop on critical, ethical and intersectional curating led for art students and professionals in Montpellier, at the initiative of Mécènes du sud and of Université Paul Valéry. Thematically connected to the Assembly of Values, also co-curated with Cédric Fauq in 2021, D·E·VALUATION is a reflection on the values (economic, social, environmental, symbolic) that govern the contemporary art field today, opening a critical debate on the subjects of access, care, vulnerability, isolation and the necessity to decolonise and decarbonise art institutions – as well as how these very subjects get coopted.

With: Gianmaria Andreetta and Noémi Michel, Anonymes, Somnath Bhatt, Eloïse Bonneviot, Ève Chabanon, Teresa Cisneros w/ Rose Nordin, Jemma Cullen, Cédric Fauq, Adrien Fregosi and Marine Lang, HTSU Cooperative, Guillaume Maraud, Nad Ma and Raju Rage, Louis Palfrey, Francesc Ruiz, Mawena Yehouessi, Abbas Zahedi, and the participants to the workshop ‘Towards critical, ethical and intersectional curating’: Mohamed Amin Abdessadok, Pierluigi Albano, Cloé Brun, Alice Dupuy, Margaux Horel, Chloé Lavanoux, Yassin De Hullessen, Sofia Lautrec, Jean Lemonnier, Fiona Mazza, Clotilde Moureau, Federica Simeoni, Adrienne Orssaud, Lénaïc Roué, Lingjun Yue

ANNA COLIN

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