A visit to the Cité des Arts:
Our MBA Contemporary Art: Sales, Display and Collecting students recently visited Cité des Arts Internationale, Paris to meet with artists Larissa Fassler and Marta Djourina at their atelier and learn about their practise.
The Cité internationale des arts serves as an artist residency, providing a space in central Paris where artists can engage in creative or research projects across various disciplines. Whether located in the Marais or Montmartre, artists have the opportunity to work in an environment that fosters creativity and facilitates connections with cultural professionals. Artists can stay for durations ranging from two months to a year, and during their residency, they receive personalized assistance from the dedicated team at Cité internationale des arts.
Larissa Fassler (b.1975, Vancouver, Canada) has lived and worked in Berlin since 1999. For the past 18 years, Fassler has been creating works of art that document and interrogate the geo-spatial politics of city life. With cartographic paintings and drawings, and architectural sculptures, she creates visualizations of the observable and intangible characteristics of a city, and documents the complicated socioeconomic and cultural issues affecting urban space today. Drawing on the tradition of psychogeography, she maps urban landscapes using her own body. She employs my own subjective systems to survey public spaces by walking their length and breadth, recording her corporeal experiences and spending hundreds of hours collecting detailed observations onsite as well undertaking archival and online research.She is represented by Galerie Poggi, Paris.
Marta Djourina (born in Sofia) studied at the UDK (Berlin University of the Arts) and at the Glasgow School of Art. Her works have been shown in numerous exhibitions, most recently at the Berlinische Galerie - Museum of Moder Art, Sofia Arsenal - Museum of contemporary Art, FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph (Berlin) , 3:e Väningen (Gothenburg), Mark Müller (Zurich), CAN (Neuchâtel).
She has received the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art (2021), the Eberhard-Roters grant (Preussische Seehandlung Foundation, awarded at the Berlinische Galerie, 2020), the Artist in residence at the Federal Foreign Office (2022) and the Goldrausch Künstlerinneprojekt (2022). In March 2023 Djourina is going to attend a 2-month residency at RU - Residency Unlimited in New York, as a part of the BAZA Award 2021. Marta’s analogue photographic practice explores the essence of light, examining the interactions between natural and artificial light with photo-sensitive media. Light becomes a subject matter, a tool and an object of investigation. She seeks to trace movement and the temporality of gestures and physical traces on flat surfaces by creating suggestive and dynamic colours compositions.
In summary, Fassler's captivating cartographic artworks unveil the complexities of urban spaces, while Marta's analogue photography sheds light on the dance between natural and artificial light. The morning spent with these artists provided our students with a profound exploration of geo-spatial politics and the essence of light, offering valuable insights into the contemporary art scene.
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