Spring–summer program
March 17 to July 28, 2024
Justin Fitzpatrick: Ballotta
For his first institutional exhibition in France, Justin Fitzpatrick furthers his exploration of human consciousness through the prism of biology. The Italian term "ballotta" refers to a small ball used to illustrate one’s vote in a ballot box and visualise the expression of a majority. Inside the human body, a similar process is at work: multicellular organisms like our own constantly consult with the various organs that they are composed of. The exhibition examines the links between consciousness and multicellularity, and hypothesises that our thoughts are an assembly which federates the will of each of our body’s cells: rather than being unitary and coherent, it would then be an aggregate of various intentions—sometimes in tension with one another, other times in agreement. Justin Fitzpatrick introduces two series of brand-new paintings and sculptures, along with his first video piece.
Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: Best Femmes Forever
For their first exhibition in France, American artist duo Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley present a new video installation entitled Best Femmes Forever (2024), a witty verbal joust between Queen Marie Antoinette and her rival, Madame du Barry. Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley have embarked on a long-term collaboration based on the scarcity of women's memoirs in history. Their work facetiously tampers with hegemonic narratives through historical rereadings that operate through temporal leaps. Best Femmes Forever focuses on the French Revolution, setting the scene at the French court at the dawn of the upheavals of 1789. For the first time, the artists use historical figures rather than archetypal creations from their eras and set them in an immersive four-channel video installation.
La chambre à échos: art collections from the Paris region
With Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Timothée Calame, Fred Deux, Julien Monnerie, Megan Rooney and Lucy Skaer. Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson inaugurates The Echo Chamber, a space where public collections from the Paris region are put into conversation with the current exhibitions. For this first iteration, The Echo Chamber collaborates with the FRAC Île-de-France as part of its multi-territorial exhibition Vieilles coques et jeunes récifs (Old ships, new shores), curated by Céline Poulin and Alicia Reymond, resonating with the themes of embodiment, trans-historical dialogue and mythology.
Curator: Thomas Conchou
Fall-winter program
October 6, 2024 to January 26, 2025
Aline Bouvy: Le prix du ticket
A tall gate, rimmed to resemble a lip, adorned with an eye and tears, blocks the entrance of the exhibition space. On one side: costumes hang from the ceiling, depicting spectral underwater fauna. On the other, for those who can get in: a monumental sculpture—half grimacing face, half open legs from which strange cries escape—and a one-way mirror booth face each other in the middle of a pathway littered with large tokens. From the walls to the works, everything is white. The title of the exhibition, The Price of the Ticket, plays on the double meaning of the word price: it refers both to what the public must pay materially to enter an amusement park, to pass through the gates, but also what it costs symbolically, what must be sacrificed. The monochromatic nature of the works also invites a shift in meaning: from white (blancheur) to whiteness (blanchité), implying in both cases a certain ordering of the world and an alleged neutrality.
An exhibition co-conceived and co-produced by Triangle-Astérides Marseille, in coproduction with Friche la Belle de Mai and in partnership with Kultur | Lx, the Ministry of Culture of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, GMEM—centre national de création musicale, Conservatoire Pierre Barbizet—INSEAMM and Bi-pole.
Curators: Victorine Grataloup, Marie de Gaulejac and Thomas Conchou
Bahar Nooridazeh: Free to Choose
Centre d’art contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson invites the London-based Iranian-Canadian artist, writer, researcher and filmmaker Bahar Noorizadeh to present her first exhibition in France. For the past ten years, Noorizadeh has produced an extensive body of works touching upon art, urban life, finance and economics, be it as an individual practitioner or through the online art platform “Weird Economies” that traces economic imaginaries and the financial arrangements of our time. The exhibition will present her latest video piece, Free to Choose (2023), an operatic financial sci-fi (fi-fi), narrated by Milton Friedman, in which we encounter the credit banking system as a time travelling machine.
La chambre à échos: partnership with MAC VAL
For its second iteration, The Echo Chamber will collaborate with MAC VAL, Val-de-Marne Contemporary Art Museum and display some of the Museum’s collections in resonance with the themes of leisure and finance.
Curator: Thomas Conchou
About us
The contemporary art center of national interest of Ferme du Buisson is supported by the DRAC Île-de-France—Ministère de la Culture, the Communauté d'Agglomération Paris-Vallée de la Marne, the Conseil départemental de Seine-et-Marne and the Conseil régional d'Île-de-France. It has been active since 1991 as part of a multidisciplinary projet bringing together theater, cinema and visual arts in the greater Paris region. La Ferme du Buisson is an exceptional heritage site with a rich and complex history whose transformations over the centuries reflect that of the Paris region: from a traditional farm in the 18th century, to a flagship of industrial agriculture in the 19th and 20th centuries, to a public establishment for cultural cooperation today. Supporting emerging and international artists with little representation in France, it specializes in collaborative practices and innovative mediation while encouraging dialogue between disciplines and experimental initiatives.
