We are excited to announce the official commencement of the Cross-Residency Program, marking the first year of a three-year cultural exchange initiative running from 2024 to 2026. French President Emmanuel Macron announced this Program during the opening of the 17th edition of Festival Croisements on his state visit to China in April of 2023. This residency is designed to support artists and creators engaged in imagining new ways of living on our planet, fostering social transformation through artistic collaboration. This program aims to create an enduring cultural exchange that will contribute to the broader landscape of contemporary art and global dialogue by connecting artists from China and France.

Former French Minister of Culture Ms. Rima Abdul Malak and Deputy Head of Mission Ms. Myriam Pavageau were present at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding for this project, alongside Mr. Gilbert Choy, Director of Jonathan K.S. Choi Foundation, and Mr. Nicolas Pillerel, Minister Counsellor of the French Embassy in China.

This visionary project, in collaboration with four prominent organizations— Choi Centre Cloud House, Palais de Tokyo, the French Embassy in Beijing, and Institut Français—will facilitate an annual residency exchange between Chinese and French artists, fostering mutual creativity, dialogue, and cultural understanding.

As part of this program, each year Chinese artists will be selected to participate in a three-month residency at the renowned Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Simultaneously, French artists will immerse themselves in the inspiring environment of Choi Centre Cloud House in Beijing. The program aims to create a bridge between the vibrant art scenes of both countries, nurturing artistic innovation and exploring shared global themes.

This year, we are proud to introduce two exceptional talents who will inaugurate the program.

Jules Lagrange (b. 1989, Besançon, lives and works in Brussels), representing France, will create new works during his residency at Cloud House and participate in public exhibitions, open studios, and panel discussions. Jules is the co-author, along with Agathe Boulanger and Signe Frederiksen, of the book Ce que Laurence Rassel nous fait faire (Editions Paraguay, 2020), a dialogue with Belgian curator Laurence Rassel which explores the possible applications of institutional psychotherapy in contemporary art organizations. This reflection on care has shaped his filmmaking practice as well as his sculptural practice, through which he explores questions of mourning and memory. Here, he presents several wooden sculptures in the form of handcrafted chests and boxes containing the personal effects of his brother, who committed suicide in 2014. Devised as personal funeral rituals, these works also serve as sociological and anthropological reflections on peripheral communities in France and on the rural world, as well as on adolescent aspirations and melancholy.

Gao Wenqian, representing China, will be participating in the Palais de Tokyo residency. Gao Wenqian was born in Shandong, China. In 2013, he graduated from the China Academy of Art (Hangzhou) and in 2019 from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. His practice features a wide range of media, including interactive installations, video games, experimental films and sound, which he uses to explore ‘meta-narratives’, many of which involve notions of memory and temporality. His works most often take time as their starting point, and seek to examine the increasingly complex temporal rhythms imposed by technology. By experimenting with the way in which different media are superimposed upon or cancelled out by one another, and by bringing together old technologies with new ones, he encourages the public to approach anew the multiple realities that surround them. He uses a range of methods to generate images at the intersection of the virtual and the real. His most recent project, AI Farm, features an interface between human society and the natural world. At a time when economic development is fueling an ever greater extraction of natural resources, this experiment aims to simulate a virtual digital farm using computers: artificial intelligence will be responsible for maintaining the balance of the ecosystem between flora and fauna, between soil and water. In so doing, AI Farm looks to provoke a debate: to what extent might ceding governance to algorithms enable the world can reclaim itself?

The First Edition of Cross-Residency Program Officially Launched in Collaboration with Palais de Tokyo, Choi Centre Cloud House, and French Institutions.

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