The hidden side of the city
© Visual created by ENSAPLV students
For several months now, ENSA Paris-la Villette and the Fonds d’art contemporain – Paris Collections have been working together on a visual arts module, coordinated by teachers Alexandra Sá and Pauline Vachon, enabling some forty students from the school to get to grips with the public collection of the City of Paris.
Designing, supervising, explaining choices: these are the skills that architecture students develop on a daily basis. Putting yourself in the shoes of an exhibition curator is a complementary adventure: a discovery of the art world, its players, its codes and its workings.
This work has given us the opportunity to design an entire exhibition. We look forward to showing it to you!
The exhibition presents the work of 20 selected artists, taking a look at the city and highlighting elements that are rarely or no longer seen: details of urban space, buildings in ruins or under construction, marginalized people in precarious situations…
The artists on show
The exhibition brings together works in all media that question the margins and underbelly of the city. Several of them focus on materials(Katinka Bock, Dominique Bailly) or urban objects(Eva Nielsen, Ken Sortais). Artists explore often-invisible forms of architecture, such as the prison(Mathieu Pernot, Michael Ashkin), the building site(Yvan Salomone, Chourouk Hriech, Mohammed Bourouissa) or the ruin (Sophie Ristelhueber, Nick Devereux). The exhibition also addresses issues of unequal access to housing(Jordi Colomer, Calin Dan) and precarious housing(Els Opsomer, Marc Pataut, Marcos Avila Forero). The place accorded to bodies in the city is of concern to several artists(Franck and Olivier Turpin, Tarik Kiswanson), particularly the condition of homeless people in our society(Véronique Boudier, Véronique Ellena).
Opening on Wednesday May 21, 2025 at 6pm, in the presence of Julie Gandini, heritage curator and head of the Fonds d’art contemporain – Paris Collections.
Curated and produced by Alexandra Sá and Pauline Vachon, ENSAPLV art and performance technique teachers, and two groups of students in Licence 3 (2024-2025), with the support of Flore Chetcuti, Anna Nouet and Juliette Degorce of the Fonds d’art contemporain – Paris Collections, as well as the model and digital workshop teams and the school’s communications department.
Exhibition open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 8pm, except May 29 (Ascension Day) and June 9, 2025 (Whit Monday). Admission free.