la vie de l'Espace

Sixteen artists in residence at the CNES Space Observatory in Marseille present an immersive exhibition imagining life in space. Don't miss it!
The artists are : Véronique Béland, Sylvie Bonnot, Monster Chetwynd, Clara Cimelli, Johan Decaix, Justine Emard, Clément Fourment, Eduardo Kac, Gaspard Maîtrepierre, Germain Marguillard, Rob Miles, Loïc Pantaly, Julien Prévieux, Benoît Pype, Stéphane Thidet, Victoire Thierrée


Who said science wasn't the stuff of dreams? In the exhibition La Vie de l'espace, sixteen artists invite you to embark on a far-off voyage, thanks in particular to a series of works produced in an extraterrestrial environment.

In reference to Maurice Maeterlinck's 1928 text, which proposed a phenomenological experience of Space, La vie de l'Espace invites visitors to follow the artists into this new world, and to perceive the unprecedented source of inspiration it represents for them. Travelling in the extraterrestrial, we begin by reinventing space infrastructures, as Sylvie Bonnot, Germain Marguillard and Benoît Pype do, and by inhabiting them, as Monster Chetwynd and Johan Decaix do. As for Eduardo Kac, Stéphane Thidet and Victoire Thierrée, they concretely experience life in this new environment and its effects, while Clément Fourment, Gaspard Maîtrepierre and Rob Miles depict for humans other modes of existence in this environment devoid of terrestrial gravity. Julien Prévieux sets out to write a new law of Space, while Véronique Béland, Clara Cimelli, Justine Emard and Loïc Pantaly let other-than-humans have free rein. Painters, photographers, video artists, draughtsmen, sculptors and visual artists thus sketch a landscape outside the Earth, disconcerting in its apparent familiarity and attractive in its strangeness.

This exhibition is organized in partnership with the Friche La Belle de Mai, as part of the "hors les murs" program of the Observatoire de l'Espace, the CNES cultural laboratory.

The works presented are drawn from the CNES Observatoire de l'Espace contemporary art collection and its programs to support creative work.