„... Somewhere between transport, weather, magazines, hotels, flashs, money, buildings, demonstrations, cars, speculation, scaffolding, cinema, clothes, seduction, politics, feelings... lies Monopolis.“

An allegory of the Western neoliberal city, the news isn't always good, and it's hard to say what the weather will be like tomorrow—but Monopolis is vibrant, cunning and unyielding. In this fictional urban setting, the artists all share a strong relationship with writing, which emancipates itself from the sole medium of text to take in other spaces: music and sound, film, fashion, music videos, but above all collage, present here as much as an artistic practice as a metaphor. 

The invited artists, drawn from different artistic disciplines and generations, cut into their surrounding material to twist and replay it differently. Their works borrow from the noise and speed of big cities, but also from their creaking, to observe the phenomena of excess, desire, resistance, and refusal that play out within contemporary urban existence. Faced with the brutality of current events and the violence of their language, the exhibition focuses on the seemingly imperceptible places where poetry can now be inserted.

Artists: Anne Boyer, Mira Calix, Thelma Cappello, Anne-Lise Coste (Uruk), Penny Goring, Rafael Moreno, Mona Varichon et Women’s History Museum.

Curator: Lou Ferrand.



Image: Invitation „Monopolis“, Graphic design: Manon Michèle, Typography: Cédrat par Formagari, Courtesy: Mécènes du Sud, Montpellier.