Workshops
“Artworks for Solidarity” – in collaboration with Art Explora
October 8th and 10th, 2022
April 6th and 7th, 2023
HANGAR Y, MEUDON
On October 2022 and April 2023, Thanks for Nothing and the Art Explora Foundation organized three “Artworks for Solidarity” workshops in Meudon’s former airship hangar – Hangar Y – as a prelude to the opening of the space to the public in March 2023. This series of collaborative moments is part of the upcoming artistic programming of the new center for art, science and culture.
The workshops were offered as a continuation of educational and participatory workshops “Artworks for Solidarity”, initiated in 2019 by Thanks for Nothing and intended for disadvantaged audiences.
These workshops have allowed the encounter and exchange between audiences of all ages and different backgrounds, with artists whose practices and works address social, environmental and civic commitments. These moments allowed to create a first contact between the audiences in order to stimulate collective creation, but also to highlight the work of these associations with solidarity commitments.
The meals were prepared by organizations committed to fair, sustainable and diversified food supply: Refugee Food and La Table de Cana.
The Art Explora Foundation and Thanks for Nothing teams have joined forces to strengthen the link between Art, Culture and Education around the Hangar Y and thus:
- To allow audiences far from culture to interact with established artists and to participate in the process of creation.
- Strengthen social ties and integration.
- To get out of the daily routine through an inspiring and hopeful experience.
- Anchor Art Explora in the Meudon area through the project which involves actors such as associations and schools classified as priority.
- To celebrate the opening of this new cultural space through an innovative project in favor of education.
- The workshops were proposed in the continuity of educational and participative workshops “Artworks for Solidarity”, initiated in 2019 by Thanks for Nothing and intended for disadvantaged audiences.
1° Saturday, October 8, 2022
The self-taught Cameroonian artist Pascale Marthine Tayou, assisted by 9 of his students from the Beaux-Arts de Paris, proposed a co-creation of 3D sculptures made of recycled straws, beads and wire. The participants were entire Tibetan, African and Ukrainian families, brought together by the nonprofit CARMEUDON. This structure, founded in 2015, aims to facilitate the integration into French society of people with refugee status or an equivalent status, regardless of their origin, nationality or religion.
2° Monday, October 10, 2022 – morning
The second workshop was led by Cameroonian artist Barthélémy Toguo whose work explores the dysfunction of the world, migration, exile and nature. Barthélémy Toguo’s works oscillate between denouncing inequalities and celebrating life, the body and nature. This morning appointment with 70 students from the Segpa CP and CE1 classes of the Monnet Debussy elementary school and 5th grade students from the local Armande Béjart school was an invitation to reflect on our relationship with nature and natural resources through painting, and to celebrate its importance.
3° Monday, October 10, 2022 – afternoon
For the third workshop, the Argentinean choreographer Cecilia Bengolea led a dance and body expression workshop during which 15 women who came with the nonprofit La Maison des Femmes de Saint-Denis, and 35 students from the Lycée Rabelais de Meudon had the opportunity to meet. Bengolea, who perceives dance and performance as animated sculptures, proposed 3 hours of dance on Caribbean music.
3° Thursday, April 6, 2023
Thursday April 6, 2023 saw the fourth “Autour de l’œuvre” workshop in collaboration with the Art Explora Foundation at Hangar Y, designed by artist Natsuko Uchino and the nonprofit Ciel mon radis. Natsuko Uchino is an artist and art teacher specializing in ceramics at the École Supérieure d’Art et Design TALM – Le Mans. Her work is a cross-disciplinary blend of art and ecology. The workshop participants were students from Thot, a French language school for refugees and asylum seekers in the Île-de-France region, and eco-delegates from the town of Meudon, aged between 9 and 10.
5° Friday, April 7, 2023 – morning
The fifth workshop took a novel turn thanks to artist Mohamed Bourouissa and the HAWAF collective, of which he is a member, alongside Sondos Al-Nakhala, Mohamed Abusal and Salman Nawati. The HAWAF collective invited students from the Auguste Rodin school in Meudon and beneficiaries of the Apprentis d’Auteuil nonprofit to model a sculpture in cotton candy, in the guise of a cloud. For Gaza, a territory with no contemporary art museum, the collective imagines a museum of possibilities that stimulates the imagination and a vision of the future. SAHAB, the Museum of Clouds, will be accessible on the cloud via a digital platform and will map out the history and future of Gaza.
6° Friday, April 7, 2023 – afternoon
The last workshop brought together students from the École Monnet-Debussy and elderly beneficiaries of the Petits Frères des Pauvres, a nonprofit that fights against the isolation and loneliness of the elderly. The workshop was conceived by French-Vietnamese artist Thu Van Tran, who imagined a collective work made up of balloons inflated with helium cylinders, grouped together in a fishing net. At the end of the workshop, participants gathered and released the net containing the balloons, which flew up to the ceiling of the former airship hangar. Inspired by the lanterns of the traditional Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival and the lanterns of the Vu Lan Festival of the Dead, Thu Van Tran invited each participant to write a memory, a thought or a wish on a balloon, dedicated to our ancestors.
This symbolism of flight and reverie brought the “Autour de l’oeuvre” workshops to a warm close, bringing together young and elder for an afternoon.
