To Make Space in the World

Taking Cité internationale des arts as the starting point, To Make Space in the World proposes a wider reflection on how contemporary artists address the promises, contradictions and afterlives of cultural internationalism, a form of exchange, action, and solidarity that extends beyond national frameworks.

Bringing together 16 artists from 15 different countries (in residence between 2003 and the present day), To Make Space in the World presents the relation to borders, known as the international, not as a settled value, but as something lived unevenly: a daily process of negotiation, translation, hospitality and forced displacement for many; a structure of opportunity, but also of dependence; a promise that could orient artists powerfully, while never entirely escaping the political and cultural asymmetries of the world around it.

While the Cité internationale des arts was conceived during the interwar period and established after the Second World War, shaped by a Europe scarred with war and genocide, the founders proposed another horizon:  one in which artistic exchange might produce forms of proximity and relation that nation states had failed to sustain in the decades before. In its name, Cité internationale des arts, the emphasis falls on the place itself as an international exception with its own codes, rhythms and temporary communities. Cité was imagined as a city within a city, a place that might suspend, if only partially, the hierarchies of the world of nation states beyond its walls. Yet Cité was also inseparable from a wider French cultural ambition. It has therefore always held two contrasting impulses: a commitment to be open to the world and a mission to put Paris at its centre. This tension inspired the exhibition title and many of the participating artists, raising questions of power relations and access to mobility.

Some artists propose horizontal forms of gathering: carnival and caravan as metaphors of exchange and safe harbor, song as the promise of return amidst annihilation, or matrilineality as an alternative social structure. Other projects remind us of art as a temporary refuge from grief and trauma, a suturing of wounds physical and symbolic, or a herald of hidden histories coming home to roost.

Curated by: Chương-Đài Võ, Charles Esche, and Federica Chiocchetti.