Frac des Pays de la Loire presents its 40th year anniversary exhibition program 2023.
On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the Frac des Pays de la Loire will host a series of exhibitions and events throughout 2023 based on its collection or collaborations with various guests, including artists, curators, authors, critics, choreographers, and performers, with the real, virtual, fantasized, or performed landscape serving as a guiding thread and relay between the projects.
Lina Lapelytè: What Happens With a Dead Fish?
November 19, 2022–February 12, 2023 at the Nantes site, 21 quai des Antilles
Curated by Claire Staebler.
This new conceptual multichannel video display recreates a work that was initially conceived as a musical performance in an open-air swimming pool with a choir of amateur singers. The choir members sing and move slowly, creating a series of tableau vivants. Lina Lapelytè’s music, choreography, and libretto inspire an intimate and poetic meditation on the present, life cycles, and even environment – frequent topics in her work.
Lina Lapelytè: The Mutes
Performance, January 22, 2023 at the Carquefou site
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Performed by a selected cast of people that consider themselves “tone deaf” or having “no musical ear,” THE MUTES differs from the classical canons that reject those who sing “out of tune”. Lina Lapelyt challenges conceptions of harmony and truth, as well as conventions, social norms, and inclusivity more broadly. The songs’ words are derived from Sean Ashton’s book Living in a Land, and the instrumental multichannel soundtrack was composed with material recorded by Angharad Davies, John Butcher, Rhodri Davies, and Lina Lapelytè herself.
La source: 1983–2023, 40 years of acquisitions in the collection of the Frac des Pays de la Loire
March–September 2023 at the Carquefou site and April–May 2023 at the Nantes site, 21 quai des Antilles.
Curated by Claire Staebler with Vanina Andréani and Arthur Chiron.
Rose Lowder’s videos are about water and salt, earth and sky, wind and birdsong, and their lively energy irrigates a double display of the Frac des Pays de la Loire’s collection. Using two recent works as starting points for each section of this exhibition, La Source de la Loire (2019-2021) and Jardin de sel (2011): La Source, 1983-2023, 40 ans d’acquisitions dans la collection du Frac des Pays de la Loire explores the origins, present, and future of this body of work in movement.
With: Dove Allouche, Richard Baquié, Elen Braga, Carolina Caycedo, Julien Creuzet, Jean Fléaca, Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Gloria, Friedman, Hamish Fulton, Paul Armand Gette, Barbara et Michael Leisgen, Rose Lowder, Jacques Minassian, Hidetoshi Nagasawa, Gyan Panchal, Eric Poitevin, Ettore Spalletti, Hervé Télémaque, Jessica Warboys…
Vous n’avez pas besoin d’y croire pour que ça existe (It doesn’t go away even if you stop believing in it)
Summer 2023 at the Nantes site
Curated by Théo Casciani.
By altering the Frac site in Nantes into another environment, between a factory, a laboratory, and a data-center, Théo Casciani creates a group show that analyzes the potential sensory mechanics of the next world, between dystopia and multiverse. The pieces created for this exhibition will investigate this theme through the senses of touch, sight, smell, hearing, and taste, and will be displayed both inside the Frac and outdoors on the opposite bank of the Loire.
This initiative is part of a series of events that will take place in conjunction with the drafting of Théo Casciani’s upcoming novel.
Situation idéale: Artists in Residency—34th International Workshops of the Frac des Pays de la Loire
Fall 2023 at the Carquefou site
Curated by Mathilde Walker-Billaud.
The Frac invites French-born, New-York based curator Mathilde Walker-Billaud to bring together four artists for a new édition of International Workshops.
Ideal Situation: Earth—Artist—Sky, a 1969 photograph where gina pane stands vertically between land and sky, looking ahead, hands in pockets—serves as a starting point to reflect on the figure of the artist and their place in a larger environment. Inspired by Frac’s collection where the Italian-French artist’s early actions in agricultural fields occupy a prominent place, this research and residency project explores the body as a point of junction between worlds while pushing the limits of its materiality and subjectivity. With the guest artists’ contributions, Mathilde Walker-Billaud pays tribute to the poetic and political significance of gina pane’s actions in the present. An investigation into the heritage of body art through the prism of ecological art and intersectional feminism, this project reevaluates the place of women artists like gina pane in an expanded contemporary art narrative.
La Machine
March 20–July 10, 2023 at the Frac, Carquefou site
Valeria Giuga’s installation La Machine is on display on the Nantes campus and at the Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou location as part of the Ideal festival. An algorithm takes control of an iconic Arcade terminal and offers choreographies to replicate. This immersive terminal encourages visitors to learn about classical, postmodern, and contemporary dances.