Official Communique: Émilie Renard, appointed Director of Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research
Official Communique
Mathilde Villeneuve, President of the association Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, and the members of the executive board are pleased to announce the nomination of Émilie Renard to the direction of Bétonsalon, labeled a contemporary art center of national interest, and her arrival as of January.
Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Culture, in full agreement with Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, has given her approval to this nomination, in accordance with the unanimous proposal of the jury held on November 23.
The jury was particularly appreciative of Émilie Renard’s project’s commitment to co-creation practices and its hospitality dimension, its openness to the local territory, particularly in connection with the University of Paris (Campus Grands Moulins), and its influence on a Parisian, national and international scale. Deeply rooted in the political, social and historical debates that cross our society, this project also aims to make Bétonsalon a space dedicated to experimentation, a time for artistic experience, as well as a sounding board for the reflections of visual arts actors.
On the strength of her previous experiences, Émilie Renard will be attentive to the need to combine artistic program and governance within an ethical and solidary cultural structure. Highly invested in professional networks as well as with artists, she is committed to the social terrain of art work. Her project renews the art center model and offers promising artistic, intellectual and political perspectives.
Curator and art critic since 2000, Émilie Renard is currently associate curator of La Criée, contemporary art center of Rennes. From 2012 to 2018, she directed La Galerie, contemporary art center of Noisy-le-Sec and in 2012, she was associate curator of the Paris Triennial with Mélanie Bouteloup, Claire Staebler, Abdellah Karroum and Okwui Enwezor, its artistic director.
The members of the executive board of Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research
Émilie Renard
Émilie Renard has mostly been a curator and art critic since 2000. She is currently associated with La Criée, contemporary art center in Rennes, with a series of exhibitions, events, research on the vernacular and its relationship to contemporary artistic creation. Her research is based on the power of art to represent and act within the structures of the imagination and society. In an institutional context, at the direction of La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre, Noisy-le-Sec, 2013-2018, she has sought to make the artistic program of the art center a lever to influence the social, aesthetic and symbolic relationships between the people who animate it: artists, teams, publics, partners. In an intersectional feminist approach, she is attentive to the ways in which power relations operate within institutions, distributing roles and prioritizing practices. To overcome these divisions, she seeks to connect what is separate within and around the practices of art: the personnel and the professional, the work of art and its administration, the majority and the minority states. In 2009-2012, she was associate curator to Intense Proximity, La Triennale, Paris, at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, with Mélanie Bouteloup, Claire Staebler, Abdellah Karroum and Okwui Enwezor, artistic director. She also seeks to articulate the art world with the realm of labor and with solidary forms of organizations, by acting within collectives or by taking part in the mission on “L’auteur et l’acte de création” (The author and the act of creation) (2019) as well as in the office of d.c.a, an association for the development of art centers in France (2013-2018).
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