Hamishi Farah / Takako Saito / Elise Grenois

Hamishi Farah, Regarding the Pain of Others
Farah's practice materialises the political, representative  and philosophical contradictions that underpin contemporary artistic production. In this exhibition, the displayed works range from landscape paintings to portraits, associated to religious sculptures from the musée de La Cour d’Or collections in Metz. Their juxtaposition reveals a genealogy linking morality, power, and punishment.

Farah focuses for his exhibition on the position of the witness, embodied here in paintings depicting pillars of salt located near the Dead Sea. Known as ‘Lot’s wife’, these formations refer to a biblical story: as she was fleeing from her city of Sodom with her family, she looked back one last time to witness its destruction—and, as punishment, was transformed into a pillar of salt. Hamishi Farah underlines that in giving a human face to natural features a resonance is established between culture and nature, in the process ‘naturalising’ history.

His exhibition juxtaposes the suffering of religious images with affects such as disgust, shame, guilt, or indifference, urging us to reckon with the contradictions that surround us. Farah indirectly addresses the issue of censorship and its double: self-censorship, as practised by cultural institutions and the media. Such inability to name reveals how the affirmation of a difference—perceived as a threat to the status quo—can quickly reach a tipping point. In such moments, language can no longer achieve consensus and the instruments of social cohesion—punishment and recognition—lose their power, making other ways of speaking and showing necessary.

Takako Saito, It's All Play
The exhibition presents a significant collection of recently acquired works, alongside works lent by private lenders and the artist herself. The selection outlines the contours of a prolific practice centred on craftsmanship, experimentation, and discovery both sensory and playful. There’s a serial logic at the heart of Saito's work—the reflection of a wish to explore, not to accumulate. Her art is deeply social and warm; every gesture counts and the audience is central. Her drawings invite to read aloud, to act, to interact. This generosity reflects a deep trust in the visitor, who is invited to become a co-actor of the work.

Born in Japan in 1929, Takako Saito has been close to the Fluxus movement, yet developing a unique approach based on interaction—an interest which can perhaps be traced to her early training in child psychology. This acquisition consolidates the historical feminist focus of the Frac's collection.

Degrés Est: Elise Grenois
Elise Grenois is interested in forms in transition: forms that take shape between the exhibition space and the studio, forms in which gesture and matter meet. Her practice is based on an experimental approach to the materials she loves—paraffin, bronze, porcelain, crystal, and glass. With her project for Frac Lorraine, Elise Grenois questions the effect of time on form; the resulting sculpture is a play with transience. Working along a non-linear time, made up of repeating gestures, melted memories, and the acceptance of instability, Elise Grenois allows time to spread, to permeate form—until dissolution itself.