The Palace of Imaginary Cities
Art Center
from 26 March to 24 July 2022 - Centre d'art
group exhibition
with Alain Bublex, Nicolas Daubanes, Louisa Raddatz, Capucine Vever, Filipe Vilas-Boas
The cabinet of utopias presents Archigram, Guy Debord, Charles Fourier, Le Corbusier, Yona Friedman, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Constant Anton Nieuwenhuys, François Schuiten, Bert Theis and Le Grand Paris des Écrivains*
associate curator Julie Sicault Maillé
* A series of short films directed by Stéfan Cornic and produced by Année Zéro and Le Pavillon de l’Arsenal
Taking its inspiration from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, La Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art is being transformed into a palace of imaginary cities along the lines of the Palace of Spheres in Fedora, one of the novel's cities.
The guest artists take over each space and propose their vision of an imaginary city permeated by their sensory and intellectual representations of civilisation. They think up fictive societies whose cities can be dreamlike urban utopias or, on the contrary, dystopias in which the potential abuses of the city around us are exacerbated. This is also a way of injecting fiction into urban reality so as to invent new possibilities, new narrative forms and new ways of thinking about urban ecosystems.
Making its way through the art centre and then outdoors, with works reflecting the eternal building sites our organic cities have become, the exhibition is fuelled by the history of utopian cities and the subjective anthology to be found in the cabinet of utopias. The cabinet is the nerve centre of the palace we are immersed in by Alain Bublex, Nicolas Daubanes, Louisa Raddatz, Capucine Vever and Filipe Vilas-Boas. Meanwhile The Palace of Imaginary Cities continues with Dreaming the City, an experimental form devised and co-constructed by Fabrication Maison with local residents during the months of the exhibition.
sat 26 march
4 pm
opening of the exhibition, with the artists and the curator
sat 18 june
Dreaming the City: co-creation project with local residents and Fabrication Maison
infos pratiques
wed – fri, 2 – 6 pm
sat – sun, 2 – 7:30 pm
(closed sun 1 may)
admission free
tours and workshops
for the family
workshops for parents and kids
every second wednesday and school holidays
at 2:30 pm
age 5+ / 5 € per child (advance booking required)
tour + narration
sun 29 may at 4 pm
ages 3–5 / 5 € per child (advance booking required)
teen workshops
tues 26 april and tues 3 may
2-6 pm
ages 13–17
free (advance booking required)
tours for all
guided tours
continuously / free
group tours
advance booking required: rp@lafermedubuisson.com / free
allez plus loin
Julie Sicault Maillé
Julie Sicault Maillé (born in 1976 in Albi, France, lives and works in Paris) graduated from the École du Louvre and later studied political science. She began her professional career in cultural mediation and visitor services, and this contact with the public led her to curating exhibitions.
Not an "author" of exhibitions, she brings the same "maieutic" approach to curating as to mediation, helping visual artists, architects, designers and landscapers develop their ideas and their works and thus honing the purpose of her projects.
Her fields of enquiry are the issues of landscape and public space, ecology and living together. Other interests include history and literature. After some 15 years in visitor services at the Château de Chamarande, south of Paris, Julie Sicault Maillé worked as director of exhibitions and the collection at the Essonne Département Collection of Contemporary Art. Currently a freelance curator, she also teaches and takes part in various artistic and cultural projects.