The 2023-24 exhibition season is drawing to a close! A small group of artists-in-residence invite you to a group exhibition – Kenza Ka, Giselle Hobbs, Capucine Chessé – and a special opening of their studios on the 5th floor: Kenza Ka, Giselle Hobbs, Capucine Chessé, Abbey Muza, Messina Hernandez-Simpson and Edgar Jaber (performance and discussion). These visits will take place during the Fête de la Cité, and are accessible by reservation only!
Working with a variety of media – weaving, painting, photography, music – the artists will share their creative process of the past months, working side by side on the 5th floor. They look forward to hosting you and offering you a rare opportunity to (re)discover their artistic universes, while entering their studio spaces.
In May, Art-Hop-Polis will take place at different times due to public holidays. Some exhibitions will open on April 30th, while others will open during the Fête de la Cité.
During the Fête de la Cité, 4 Cité Internationale houses: Maisons des Étudiants de la Francophonie, Collège franco-britannique, Fondation des États-Unis, and Maison du Cambodge are honored to present the exhibition “Balades Photographiques” by the Photo Club de la Cité, winner of the Fonds des Initiatives Résidentes (FIR) 2024 program and and will be hosted by the Collège franco-britannique.
The program of participating houses throughout the month of May is available on CitéScope.
Open Studios
A select number of studios will be open on Sunday, May 26th from 2pm to 4pm. Meet the team in the exhibition space and they will accompany you to the 5th floor.
For safety reasons, the FEU’s front door will be closed during the Fête de la Cité. Please use the official door on the garden side and ring the reception bell.
Exhibition Opening Times & Visits
The exhibition will remain open from Monday to Friday: 10am to 12.30pm and 2.30pm to 5.30pm (exceptional closings below).
For visits outside the times listed above, please contact us at contact@fondationdesetatsunis.org.
Exceptional Openings
If you attend to the concerts listed below, we will open the exhibition for you at the end:
Tuesday April 30th : Concert Printempo de Samuel Gaskin, Jonathan Mutel and William Cravy
Sunday May 5th : Rendez-vous Musical #99
Friday May 24th : Split Bill: sig, other and The Sound of Space Between Us | Joelle Santiago & Giselle Hobbs
Exceptional Closings
Please note that the exhibition will be closed on weekends and on the following dates:
Wednesday May 1
Tuesday May 7 to Friday May 10
Monday May 20
Thursday 23 to Friday May 24
About the Artists
Student first at the Duperré School, then at École des Arts Décoratifs of Paris in Cinema Animation, Capucine Chessé develops a practice centred on the narration of places. Her journey began with a victory in a European architectural competition in 2020,«PRIMA», whose winning project was built in concrete in the Nord pas de Calais. She also won a mapping competition organised by «Éditions Michelin, focusing on the Basco-Landaise coast, a region linked to her childhood. In addition, her interest in the landscape of the Var was marked by a collaboration with the «Fondation de Carmignac», where she made a wooden model on display in their garden. During her studies, Capucine explored different places, including Japan and South Korea, where she spent 6 months learning pottery and graphic design at Kaywon University. Her latest film captures the atmosphere of the street markets that she frequented. Currently, she is focusing on the United States Foundation, in particular on the 5th floor, home of artists and musicians, which she will explore as part of her graduate project.
Giselle Hobbs is an artist based in New York who is currently the US-France Fulbright Scholar in Painting at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris. She creates large-scale illusionistic paintings that probe the relationship between humans and the natural environment while taking into consideration a range of cosmologies from various time periods and geographical locations. Her practice is in a constant dialogue with other media such as photography, eco and bio art, as well as projections and installations that sometimes include moving images and audio. She is a graduate of Cornell University where she earned her MFA at the College of Architecture, Art and Planning. In 2022, she was awarded the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship for Painting. Her artwork was jury selected by the Council for the Arts award and her proposal was so well-received that it was selected for the Biennial. Giselle Hobbs has received art awards yearly including the Kable Russell Award and the Ulysse Award for Outstanding Achievement in Fine Arts. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her art is in private collections in the US and abroad, including at the University of Cambridge. Her work is currently featured in an exhibition at Workhouse Arts Center on view from June-October, 2023.
Born in Boston and raised in Bucharest, Edgar Jaber is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Applied Mathematics at ENS Paris-Saclay. He is a pupil of the Romanian pianists Toma Popovici and Viorica Rădoi as well as of American pianist Jay Gottlieb. Also a conductor, Jaber is the current musical director of the Orchestre du Collège Néerlendais at Cité Universitaire. His repertoire focuses mainly on classical and romantic German composers as well as early twentieth century modernism.
Kenza Ka is a French-Senegalese eco-designer specializing in textiles and materials. After graduating in Design-Fine Art from Concordia University in Montreal, she moved to Paris, where she is currently studying textile design at EnsAD, École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Her work addresses issues of cultural circulation, education through design and the environment. She loves to create colorful and joyful new imaginary worlds, with the aim of creating a more sustainable future.
Abbey Muza uses weaving as a methodology for image-making centered in queer identity, haptics, and sensuality. While at the Fondation des États-Unis, Muza will make a series of tapestries that pay homage to the revolutionary queer artists and writers working in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s. To produce this work, they will study period archives of French queer artists and writers and conduct research into tapestry produced during the time. They will make this work as a visiting artist in the Department of Design textile et matière at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Decoratifs. In their work, they aim to highlight these remarkable histories and redefine them for the contemporary era. Muza received their MFA as a University Fellow at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and their BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They have shown their work throughout the United States and internationally, at spaces including Tiger Strikes Asteroid Philadelphia, Threewalls, and LVL3. Their residencies include an Ox-Bow Fellowship, ACRE (Artist’s Cooperative Residency and Exchange), and Alternative Worksite (supported by the Robert Overby Foundation).
Messina Hernandez-Simpson is an American artist and student who’s academic journey began in New York at Sarah Lawrence college where she pursued an undergraduate degree in fine arts. This period allowed for her exploration and development of new artistic techniques as well as her initial opportunity to move to France through a study abroad program. Since she has resided in the fifth floor artist residencies of the Fondation des Etats Unis for the last two years. In this studio, she has been able to create an array of artistic works, from acrylic, gouache and oil paintings to lithographs and drawings. Her artistic focuses vary from portraiture and still lives to a more recent passion; lithographic printmaking coupled with a return to her first artistic tool; the marker. Last year, she had a solo exhibition also at the Fondation des Etats Unis which exhibited her collection of prints with 60 pieces on display. In the last year she has returned to the medium which she first used in her artistic endeavors: pen and ink as well as markers. She has decided to continue her artistic and academic career in Paris where she is now in the midst of preparing an undergraduate degree in French literature at Université Paris Cité while still continuing her artistic pursuits independently. This latter pursuit manifests itself in a visual diary which she has been putting together to commemorate the space which has so influenced her creative process, the artist residency on the fifth floor of this very building.