Looking for a cultural break? From the Marais to Pantin through Ménilmontant and Montreuil, we’ll be your guide for this month’s selection of art exhibits!
François-Xavier Bouchart – Belleville, années 70
Until January 15th

“François-Xavier Bouchart produced a photographic work about Belleville in the 1970s, many of whose buildings were then being destroyed. His personal view of this neighborhood complements those of Doisneau and Willy Ronis. Through photography, he brings his own vision of places, spaces, and interactions between the inhabitants of the neighborhood. He tells the story of its profound transformation at the time, the daily life of those who live there despite the destruction. Through his urban strolls and photographs, he continues the inventory made by Georges Perec in his documentary En remontant la Rue Vilin.”
Outdoors – Free exhibit
Walls of Pavillon Carré de Baudouin
Rue des Pyrénées & Rue de Ménilmontant, 75020 Paris
mairie20.paris.fr
Sanne De Wilde & Bénédicte Kurzen – Land of Ibeji
November 4th to January 7th

“In Land of Ibeji, photographers Sanne De Wilde and Bénédicte Kurzen investigate the mythology of twins in Nigeria, where the rate of natural twin births is higher than anywhere else in the world. As sacred beings, the magical and spiritual powers of twins are celebrated with mythical fervor, but also condemned as unnatural. “Ibeji”, which means “double birth” and “the two inseparable” in Yoruba, represents the ultimate harmony between two people. Embracing this concept, the photographers have created intensely colorful portraits of twins. They play with the concept of doubling to create an imaginative photographic story, using double exposures, mirror reflections, and color filters.”
Wednesday to Friday: 2pm-7pm – Saturday: 11:30am-6pm – Free admission
Fisheye Gallery
2 rue de l’hôpital Saint-Louis, 75010 Paris
www.fisheyegallery.fr
Jacqueline Duhême – Il était une fois…
Félicité Landrivon & Roxanne Maillet – Freed from Designer
Until January 1st / Until December 18th

In Nogent-sur-Marne, near Bois de Vincennes, the MABA and the Maison Nationale des Artistes present a striking double exhibition until the end of the year. Freed From Designer brings together the graphic worlds of young designers Félicité Landrivon (also signing under Brigade Cynophile) and Roxanne Maillet. Everyday items, furniture, t-shirts, posters: in a venue redesigned like a real apartment, the duo gives free rein to its creativity and leads the visitor into a space where design, shapes, and colors combine to deliver a message of feminist emancipation. Once upon a time… Jacqueline Duhême, l’imagière honors a prolific artist who has particularly distinguished herself in the field of children’s literature, and was also one of the pioneers of documentary drawing starting from the 1960s. The exhibit is an opportunity to discover the rich and poetic life and career of an artist for whom “drawing is a necessity, like offering a gift to someone you love”. — Our article (French)
Monday to Friday (Thursdays excepted): 1pm-6pm – Saturday & Sunday: 12pm-6pm – Free admission
MABA – Fondation des Artistes
16 rue Charles VII, 94130 Nogent-sur-Marne
www.fondationdesartistes.fr
Oli Epp – Nine Lives
Until November 12th

“The London-based painter Oli Epp has described his work as “post-digital Pop”, a term that acknowledges his debt to artists of the 1950s and ’60s who appropriated popular culture. The term also suggests however, with that qualifying “post-”, a critical stance on the typical dynamics of contemporary digital media. Epp draws deeply from imagery sourced online, replicating the vivid, plastic luminosity of graphics and photography already highly keyed to appeal to the idly scrolling viewer. Like good advertisements, his pictures stop us in our tracks, which is what they are designed to do. Unlike most ads, however, they are usually somehow troubling, or corrupted. They are both stunningly gorgeous and grotesque; perfect and flawed; appealing and repulsive. For his exhibition Nine Lives, Epp brings together nine works of cats, animals he has depicted in the past (and perennial subjects of viral videos). His title acknowledges, of course, the myth that cats live multiple lives (successive, presumably, not simultaneous)—a legend probably born from cats’ ability to land safely even after flying or falling from considerable heights.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Semiose
44 rue Quincampoix, 75004 Paris
semiose.com
Manon Hias & Saira Alejandra Rodriguez – Au cœur de la rencontre avec la communauté Tayazú
November 7th-30th

“Saira comes from Vaupès, a region of the Amazon. She is Cubea, and belongs to the Tayazú community. When she was 15 years old, she left her region because of a forced displacement caused by the presence of armed groups. In Colombia, it is particularly the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and peasant populations that are victims of armed conflicts. The populations flee their territory, their homes, and take refuge in the big cities. Manon, an anthropology student at the University of Paris Nanterre, met Saira in the Bakata Park, a place of political struggle and resistance for the indigenous populations in Bogota. Over the months, a friendship developped between them, and Saira invited Manon to return together to her family, the Tayazú community, in the Amazon. These photos are from moments of life in and around this Cubeo community.”
Tuesday to Sunday: 10am-7pm – Free admission
Péniche librairie L’eau et les rêves
9 quai de l’Oise, 75019 Paris
www.penichelibrairie.com
Jean Mallard – L’heure bleue
November 17th to January 24th

“The Slow Galerie presents the solo exhibition L’heure bleue by Jean Mallard, a rising figure in French illustration. The exhibition brings together thirty previously unpublished watercolors, all created between 2021 and 2022, mainly large formats, which took more than a year to complete. Inspired by a trip to Sicily, it is both a celebration of the passing of time and a quest for a lost paradise. Each drawing is a visual “safe place”, a mental refuge. He signs this exhibition as the imprint of a generation striving for wellness, to give a little thickness to time, to life, in a world in perpetual acceleration.”
Monday to Saturday: 11am-7pm – Free admission
Slow Galerie
5 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Paris
www.slowgalerie.com
Boris Mikhaïlov – Journal ukrainien
Until January 15th

Going through the fifty years of stories told in the Ukrainian diary of photographer Boris Mikhailov, visitors realize how different its pages can be from one another. First, one discovers a personality both ingenious and eccentric, eager for artistic experimentation: the works of his series Yesterday’s Sandwich follow one another to the timeless melodies of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, a montage composed during the golden age of psychedelia in the 1960s and 1970s in order to generate “a new and metaphorical image”. For this exhibition, the MEP has brought together some twenty series of varied inspirations and themes, with a total of nearly 800 photographs presented on the floors of the institution in the heart of the Marais. Regularly subject to KGB visits during the Soviet era, Boris Mikhailov developed a personal aesthetic approach, sometimes described as “bad photography”, in order to escape the regime’s censorship. The photographer deployed a wealth of ingenuity to assume his alternately whimsical and disturbing gaze despite the political hazards and the imposition of an official imagery that was theoretically unavoidable. — Our article (French)
Wednesday to Friday: 11am-8pm (until 10pm on Thursdays) – Saturday & Sunday: 10am-8pm – €11/€7
Maison européenne de la photographie
5/7 Rue de Fourcy, 75004 Paris
www.mep-fr.org
Eko Nugroho – Heads Full of Empty Views
Until November 26th

“Eko Nugroho, the internationally renowned Indonesian contemporary artist who took over the spaces of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 2012, is back in France. Through this exhibition, he invites us to discover the full richness and depth of his art, which dives us into a surrealist universe, resolutely graphic, with vivid and luminous works that convey an unlimited optimistic energy. […] Nugroho has an ability to connect with the environment that surrounds him, capturing the noise and fury of the street, the exchange of glances, identities and attitudes. He expresses these flows in drawings and patterns that invade the space, and all means of creation are appropriate to represent these fusions between Indonesia and the West, street culture and the art world, political issues and intimate reflections.”
Mardi à samedi : 11h-19h – Entrée libre
Danysz
78 rue Amelot, 75011 Paris
danyszgallery.com
Hélène Planquelle – Monsters of love
November 10th-26th

“The exhibition Monsters of love presents the first works of an eponymous series. The artist tackles the theme of monstrous love through clusters of anonymous bodies, with more or less disturbing appearances, in the chiaroscuro atmosphere that characterizes her work. Between limbs that mingle to the point of indistinction, hands that come out of the shadows to grab an arm or a leg, the faces slip away in this great struggle of faltering bodies. The work of Hélène Planquelle, a fervent defender of figuration, is rooted in humankind’s ancestral fascination of man for stories. Art being not so much an answer, but rather a certain way of asking questions, her works unfold in ambiguity, duality, and plurality of meanings.”
Tuesday to Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Galerie Nanoh
22 rue Jules Vallès, 75011 Paris
www.nanoh.art
Revoir la nuit
November 18th to December 17th

“Revoir la nuit (To see the Night again) is both a wish and an injunction. The exhibition is conceived as a nocturnal crossing where seven artists show what the day hides from us. The journey translates a sensitive approach through the exploration of personal experiences and stories, echoing our collective history. Curated by Océane Arnaud, the exhibition brings together Maéva Prigent, Nour Awada, Giancarlo Pirelli, Clément Salzedo, Anne Bravy, Lisa Ouakil, and Mélanie Feuvrier.”
Wednesday to Friday: 2pm-6pm (until 9pm on Thursdays) – Saturday: 2pm-7pm – Free admission
Centre Tignous d’art contemporain
116 rue de Paris, 93100 Montreuil
centretignousdartcontemporain.fr
Cinétique ! La sculpture en mouvement
Until December 11th

“To celebrate its fifth year of opening to the public, Espace Monte-Cristo, the Parisian venue of the Villa Datris Foundation, presents Cinétique! Sculpture in Motion. The exhibition reveals the heart of its collection, bringing together more than 35 sculptures by French and international artists. Combining historical and scientific references, the exhibition brings together kinetic sculptures from the 1960s alongside more recent ones, sometimes displaying cutting-edge technologies. Whether static, dynamic, or mechanical, the featured artworks allow us to discover movement in all its forms.”
Wednesday to Sunday: 11am-1pm & 2pm-6:30pm – Free admission
Fondation Villa Datris – Espace Monte-Cristo
9 rue Monte Cristo, 75020 Paris
fondationvilladatris.fr
Parisiennes citoyennes! (1789-2000)
Until January 29th

It is a history made of revolts, pamphlets, strikes, indignations, petitions, demonstrations. That of the countless battles waged by the women of Paris to free themselves from the shackles imposed by the religious, moral, capitalist, and patriarchal orders. Conceived by a quartet comprising the director of the Carnavalet Museum Valérie Guillaume, the professor of contemporary history Christine Bard, and the curators Catherine Tambrun and Juliette Tanré-Szewczyk, Parisiennes citoyennes! brings together nearly 170 works and documents, some of which have never been shown before, in order to retrace this other revolution still taking place in the capital to this day. […] — Our article (French)
Tuesday to Sunday: 10am-6pm – €11/€9/€0 – Free admission to the rest of the museum
Musée Carnavalet – Histoire de Paris
23 rue de Sévigné, 75003 Paris
www.carnavalet.paris.fr
Festival Visions d’Exil
November 9th-16th

“As part of the 5th edition of its festival, the workshop of artists in exile stops at the Magasins généraux for an exhibition entitled Stop Wars. It brings together installations, photographs, videos, paintings, and sculptures by Ukrainian, Russian, Burmese, Afghan, Syrian, Palestinian, Lebanese, and French artists. An important part of the exhibition is devoted to activism, a mode of expression taken up by many artists in the last two years, in reaction to growing censorship. Protest-based performance will also be tested and debated during a workshop and a public meeting. Concerts and performances will continue to shed light on the various conflicts in the world today.”
Every day: 2pm-8pm (dance and music until midnight on Saturday 12th) – Free admission
Magasins généraux
1 rue de l’Ancien Canal, 93500 Pantin
magasinsgeneraux.com
Final Girl
November 5th & 12th

“Survival, yes, but at what cost, and in what kind of world? Sexualized, ridiculed, assaulted, massacred, female protagonists are traditionally destined to tragic ends in horror films. The Final Girl is the other female protagonist of the genre, the famous badass survivor who gets rid of her oppressor at the end of the movie. Reactualizing the figure of the She-ro as an emblem of resilience in the post #MeToo era, this program is thought of as a free interpretation of the Final Girl archetype, as much as it picks from the aesthetic references of slasher movies. The guest directors draw portraits of women fighting with their own weapons, redefining the victim/she-ro opposition, and asking the question of the aftermath. Does winning a battle really means the end of the fight? This video program features Eden Tinto Collins & Gystère, Louise Fauroux, Helen Anna Flanagan & Josefin Arnell, Liu Chongyan, Imis Kill, Caroline Rambaud, Sacha Rey, Anhar Salem, and Silina Syan.”
Saturday, November 5th: 5pm-10pm – Saturday, November 12th: 5pm-8pm – Free admission
DOC
26 rue du Docteur Potain, 75019 Paris
doc.work
Illustration (cropped):
6 octobre 1979, Marche des femmes
© Pierre Michaud / Gamma Rapho
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