Le vent se lève

The Secretary General and Interim Director Stéphane Gaillard is pleased to present Le vent se lève from May 24 to August 18, 2019, the fellow residents’ annual exhibition curated by Hou Hanru and Evelyne Jouanno.

This year, the French Academy in Rome Rome hosts sixteen fellows:
Sasha Blondeau (composer), Miguel Bonnefoy (writer), Rebecca Digne (plastic artist), Frederika Amalia Finkelstein (writer), Gaëlle Gabillet et Stéphane Villard (designers), Hélène Giannecchini (writer), Lola Gonzàlez (filmmaker and plastic artist), François Hébert (filmmaker), Clara Iannotta (composer), Pauline Lafille (art historian), Thomas Lévy-Lasne (painter), Mathieu Lucas (architect and landscaper), Léonard Martin (plastic artist), Lili Reynaud-Dewar (plastic artist), Riccardo Venturi (art historian).

The exhibition brings together the achievements of the fellow artists working in the broadened field of creation, such as the visual arts, design, architecture, music, film, literature and art history.

All projects submitted result from their research and activities during their one-year stay in the Eternal City. Highlighting the tension between individual creativity and collective projects, this exhibition offers cross-disciplinary dialogues between creators to address the pressing issues of our time, ranging from social and environmental crisis to political struggle, through the examination of memory and local and global realities – notably in light of their experiences in Rome and in Italy during this particular period of history.

Faced with today’s challenges and with the symbol evoked by the recent fall of the Villa Medici’s emblematic trees following strong winds, the exhibition intends to open a new space to exchange and reflect on our common future, through the presentation of the fellow artists’ rich and various projects.

According to Evelyne Jouanno and Hou Hanru, the fellow residents “sign up for specific shared assignments, short but intense, as is demonstrated by this exhibition which concludes their stay and is designed to show not only the individual efforts and the search for excellence, but also the work done in order to free themselves from certain personal routines, to go beyond the usual means and ways of expression in order to experiment.”

With this exhibition, Villa Medici thus tends to assert itself as one of the most active and open platforms for experimentation and dialogue in contemporary creation, in Rome and around the world.

The trilingual catalogue (French, Italian, English) offers an open and poetic stroll at the heart of the artistic and intellectual projects of the residents.

The French Academy in Rome is the first artists' residence, founded by Louis XIV in 1666. Since 1803, it is based in the Villa Medici and now welcomes French-speaking artists from all disciplines as well as researchers in art history and theory.

Opening hours of the exhibition: Tuesday to Sunday, from 10am to 7pm (last entry at 6:30pm).

It is necessary to book visits for school groups by writing to the department of educational activities: didattica@villamedici.it