This program is a collaboration between The Polygon Gallery, Griffin Art Projects, and Cité internationale des arts, with the support of The Embassy of France in Canada and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris.
Installation view: Ground Control, 2020, Bildmuseet, Umeå. With works by Maria Thereza Alves, Gerd Aurell, Céline Condorelli, Suzanne Husky and Mónica de Miranda. Photo: Mikael Lundgren.
Join the 2022 France/Canada Curatorial Residency Program awardee, Clelia Coussonnet, to learn what she has been up to through her time at Griffin!
Clelia Coussonnet is an independent curator, researcher, editor and writer. She is interested in how visual cultures address political, social and spiritual issues in different, or complementary, ways to other disciplines. Her research revolves around botanical politics and power structures, investigating political imprints on plants, circulation and resilience. As a ramification, she dives into riverine and marine environments considering liquidity, toxicity and contamination. In Vancouver, she will pursue her research, exploring how the colonial history of Canada has made use of plants to assert power over territories, considering the meanders of the city's waterways and aqueous reserves, and listening to the legacies and murmurs that lie in the earth and sediments.
ABOUT THE PROGRAM: Alternating annually for four years between Paris and Vancouver, the aim of the France/Canada Curatorial Residency program is to provide opportunities to develop curatorial projects and foster cultural exchange in response to contemporary art contexts in France and Western Canada. The program was established in October 2021. Writer, curator, and cultural producer Missla Libsekal from Vancouver was awarded the inaugural residency, which took place at the Cité internationale des arts in the Marais district of central Paris.
Residents are hosted at Griffin Art Projects during their tenure. The residency provides travel, accommodation, and a stipend for three months, as well as a production budget to launch a public program, during which Coussonnet will have the opportunity to share her findings from her research in Vancouver.