60 rue de Seine 75006
3rd floor of the hotel
2pm-7pm
01 44 32 17 17 hotel-lalouisiane.com
Room Service 2
The starting point of this project resides in a reflection on contemporary narratives in photographic creation on the one and ; and the myth that surrounds the hotel La Louisiane on the other hand. PhotoSaintGermain invited ten artists to take over a hotel room for four days. In the continuity of the creative energy that springs from the hotel La Louisiane — known for its tradition of welcoming artists since the 1930s —, PhotoSaintGermain presents an intertwining of several curations, related to the image and its use — between performance, exhibition, and publication.
Room 31 Nikola Mihov 31.12
While visiting his ailing mother at the hospice, Nikola Mihov decided to take on the role of Santa Claus. Shortly before Christmas he delivered gifts to all the residents – old and nearly forgotten people who seem to have reverted back to childhood. He presented the last gift to his own mother. The cycle of life and its memories find an extension in his project "31.12" in which he combines photography, sound, objects and family archive.
Room 32 Olivier Cablat Le Stade de la Lose
The Stade de la Lose project is built around Olivier Cablat's private collection of objects marked by defeats or traumatic soccer events.
We learn that the airplane-shaped ashtray commemorates the death of almost the entire Torino Football Club team in a crash in 1949, that Bernard Tapie recorded a song entitled "Réussir sa vie" on vinyl in 1986, or that a mug recalls Eric Cantona's incredible kick to an English fan in 1995.
This collection embodies the contemporary ability of images to shift from one medium to another — at the crossroads of an archive of fans' objects, a collection of printed objects and a parallel reading of an intimate and collective history.
Room 33 Jean-Marie Donat Mon repos
"Dear Marie-Thérèse and my dear godson Jacques,
I am sending you my room.
Until I can write to you at greater length, I renew here all my affection and my prayerful remembrance. I pray for you every day. I think a lot of Jacques, whom I love, and entrust him to the Good Jesus, Friend of children. Jacques, I ask you to pray well and work hard at school, and to help your poor mother a little at home.
Give my big affectionate kisses to both of you and pray a little for me too.
Thank you and see you soon.
I send you an affectionate kiss, dear Mom, and count on your prayers.
Your grateful child,
Sister Marie-Jacques"
In his room at Hôtel La Louisiane, Jean-Marie Donat presents his collection of postcards of nursing homes.
Room 34 Pierre Leguillon Le Musée des Erreurs
Le Musée des Erreurs, created in 2013 in Brussels by artist Pierre Leguillon, preserves images of little value, scraps of the cultural industry and consumer society, to which we can associate family photographs. These images, inherited from the analog era, offer a history of media and distribution channels before the all-digital age, as well as a set of enduring stereotypes that are still prevalent on our smartphone screens.
In his room, Pierre Leguillon displays a portable, mobile and autonomous museum, on a 1:1 scale. It is not a miniature reduction of an ideal museum, like an architectural model or a doll's house. On the contrary, it is a possible museum, a space for dissemination as compact and realistic as the "legitimate gallery" housed in Robert Filliou's hat, or the log bar carried by André Cadere.
Leguillon presents several collections from the Musée des Erreurs, which you could take with you in your suitcase, perhaps to replace the posters, television or fake paintings that usually adorn the walls of hotel rooms.
Room 35 Antoine Seiter J
Antoine Seiter grew up in the Loir-et-Cher region of France. During his studies, he would frequently visit his parents' home and began photographing his younger sister, Julia (J). The project, which began in 2008 and continues to this day, documents his sister's childhood, adolescence and passage into adulthood. The sequence is marked by an accident, her changing body, and labor. This face-to-face encounter reveals the many facets of her face — opened, and closed. In other words, the face's capacity to know itself, and to recognize and dialogue with the other.
Chambre 36 Alix Marie Flesh light
Alix Marie's artistic practice combines photography, sculpture and installation. Her work explores our relationship with the body and its representation, borrowing as much from ancient mythology and popular tales as from the life of the artist and those close to her. The body - that of the viewer who experiences the work, that of the artist at work and that which is given to be seen - is omnipresent, at once envisaged as an object of desire and the product of norms. For PhotoSaintGermain in La Louisiane, she is developing a new work linked to one of the recurring themes of her practice: the intimate.
Room 37 Prarthna Singh Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh
Har Shaam Shaheen Bagh *(self-published, 2022) documents and commemorates a peaceful sit-in protest in the working-class New Delhi neighbourhood of Shaheen Bagh from December 2019 until March 2020. The book serves as a crucial record of an extraordinary moment in the political and contemporary history of India where Muslim women, of all ages, seized their right to peaceful protest and stood in defence of our constitutional values. rom the women of Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, The Dandi March and the Chipko Movement, for those at the frontlines of India’s non-violent protests, this book is an act of remembrance, to preserve the powerful legacy of women at the forefront of historic revolutions.
*Every evening belongs to Shaheen Bagh
Room 38 Aurélien Mole Araï, La Muse / le Sujet
Commissaire: Samuel Gassman
La Muse/le Sujet is a double series of photographs of model Araï Kesava Naidu, a woman from the Dalit caste who earns her living posing for artists.
In the first series: (the Muse), Araï, nude, repeats from memory the poses she has held for many of India's modern painters. In the second series: (the subject), we see her visiting Bombay's Museum of Modern Art for the first time in her life.
Room 40 Bérengère Fromont L'amour seul brisera nos cœurs
Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent." wrote Monique Wittig in Les Guérillères. L'amour seul brisera nos coeurs was born of a desire to fill the gaps in lesbian representations, to reclaim our narratives and thereby our intimacy - an intimacy that has been fetishized, distorted, hijacked, sullied, threatened and objectified throughout history - to reclaim a place in the public space as well as in art history. Fighting against erasure and invisibilization, using photography as both a medium of revelation and an archive. We now know that intimacy is political. It's about love and revolution
Room 41 Lina Scheynius My Photo Books
Intimacy, in all its depth and truth, too raw for social networks, finds its place in three new books, with the distinctive signature of Lina Scheynius.
After the boxed edition of her first 11 photographic autobiographies in 2019, Lina Scheynius returns to JBE Books to publish the books in singular volumes opuses 12, 13 and 14 of the My Photo Books collection. An invitation to witness the everyday, but also to encounter and transcend many formal limits, these books deploy the contemplative carnation so characteristic of Lina Scheynius.
Books, limited editions and never-before-seen prints: an abundance of images and lives in La Louisiane bedroom.
With the support of
Hôtel La Louisiane
The Hôtel La Louisiane, 60 rue de Seine in the heart of Saint Germain-des-Prés, has built its identity in a setting full of chaos, freedom and nonsensical yet precious chatter. Since the days of Rimbaud and Verlaine, artists, creators and travelers in search of new experiences have taken up residence here for brief stays - among those who have lived here: Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco, Lucian Freud, Albertine Sarrazin, Syd Barret, Keith Haring, Quentin Tarantino and other contemporaries to whom Hôtel La Louisiane owes its discretion.
