On the occasion of its 40th anniversary, the Frac des Pays de la Loire is deploying throughout 2023 a programme of exhibitions and events based on its collection or collaborations with various guests: artists, curators, authors, critics, choreographers, performers, and where the real, virtual, fantasized or performed landscape becomes a guiding thread and a relay between the projects.
Welcome to all and happy new year!
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 proposal multichannel video installation recreates a work originally created as a musical performance with a choir of amateur singers in an open-air swimming pool. The members of the choir sing and move slowly creating a succession of tableaus vivants. Music, choreography and libretto composed by the artist invite for an intimate and poetic meditation on the present, cycles of life or even ecology – recurring themes in the work of Lina Lapelytè.
Lina Lapelytè: The Mutes
Performance, January 22, 2023 at the Carquefou site
Performed by a selected cast of people that consider themselves “tone deaf” or having “no musical ear,” THE MUTES departs from the classical canons that exclude those who sing “out of tune”. Lina Lapelytė questions the notions of harmony and accuracy and, more broadly, conventions and social norms and inclusivity. The lyrics for the songs are taken from the book by Sean Ashton called Living in a Land and the instrumental multichannel sountrack 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.
Water and salt, earth and sky, wind and birdsong are the subjects of Rose Lowder’s films, whose vital energy irrigates a double exhibition of the Frac des Pays de la Loire’s collection. Taking two recent works La Source de la Loire (2019-2021) and Jardin de sel (2011) as starting points for each of the sections of this exhibition: La Source, 1983–2023, 40 ans d’acquisitions dans la collection du Frac des Pays de la Loire explores the origins, the present and the 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.
Théo Casciani conceives a group exhibition which investigates the potential sensory mechanisms of the next world, between dystopia and multiverse, by transforming the Frac site in Nantes into another space, between a factory, a laboratory and a data-center. The works produced for this exhibition will explore this subject by taking hold of touch, sight, smell, hearing and taste, and will be deployed both inside the Frac and outside by investing the opposite bank of the Loire.
This project is part of a cycle of events accompanying the writing of Théo Casciani’s next 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
As part of the Ideal festival, Valeria Giuga presents her installation La Machine on the Nantes campus and at the Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou site. An algorithm takes over an iconic Arcade terminal to offer choreographies to reproduce. This immersive terminal invites to discover classical, postmodern or contemporary dances.
The Frac des Pays de la Loire is co-financed by the State—Drac des Pays de la Loire and the Région des Pays de la Loire, and is supported by the Département de Loire-Atlantique.
The Frac receives support from the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, the CCNN, the Sodebo Corporate Foundation and Paprec.
Some of its projects are part of the Voyage à Nantes and the Trajectoires Festival.
Press contact: Emmanuelle Martini, e.martini [at] fracpdl.com
