VILLEURBANNE.- In 2025, the Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne/Rhône-Alpes (IAC) will present four exhibitions within its walls exploring subjects such as resilience, image production, porosity between matters, histories and worlds. In the region, as is customary every two years, the IAC will present the Galeries Nomades program, which supports the production and development of monographic projects by artists who graduated one or two years ago from one of the five art schools in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region.
The 2025 programme reflects IAC’s commitment to the international art scene, featuring artists such as Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Laurie Charles, Gabrielle Goliath, Eisa Jocson, melanie bonajo, Phoebe Boswell or Denise Ferreira da Silva and Arjuna Neuman. Additionally, IAC will host debut exhibitions in France by Yi-Fan Li and Yung-Ta Chang.
Continuing its support for the French and regional art scene, IAC will have the pleasure of presenting works by Benoît Piéron, Kapwani Kiwanga, Tarek Lakhrissi, Mawena Yehouessi, and, in a solo exhibition of unprecedented scale in her career, the artist Joséfa Ntjam.
in the hours between dawns
February 7–April 13
With: melanie bonajo, Phoebe Boswell, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Laurie Charles, Denise Ferreira Da Silva & Arjuna Neuman, Gabrielle Goliath, Eisa Jocson, Kapwani Kiwanga, Tarek Lakhrissi, Benoît Piéron, Mawena Yehouessi
A journey at times dreamed or imagined, in the hours between dawns summons practices that question, unravel, and transform structures of power and hegemonic narratives while imagining sensitive and multifaceted futures. It presents the works of eleven artists or duos as so many poems from which possible horizons emerge. Through expression by the body, the writing of new narratives, homage, or even caress, they open pathways to the light hidden within the darkest spaces. Between vulnerability and strength, in the hours between dawns invites us to rethink the boundaries of the visible and the audible, of survival and dreaming. Like Audre Lorde’s A Litany for Survival, from which the title is drawn, it invites us to listen to those voices that murmur, sing, and persist in the interstices of day and night.
Yung-Ta Chang
May 16–July 27
Born in Taiwan in 1981, Yung-Ta Chang lives currently in Taipei. His oeuvre features the subtle, negligible physical phenomena and sounds in our quotidian existence. By virtue of rigorous experiments and studies on sound, materials, science and data, the artist specializes in tackling the relations among humankind, technology and environment, whereby he endeavors to heighten our haptic perception of the world of fantasy within the heavily vision-oriented mainstream. Chang’s works encompass multiple forms that range from audio-visual and experimental sound to sound installation and live performance.
Li Yi-Fan
May 16–July 27
Li Yi-Fan is an artist who describes his production process as staging a death match between artist and software until a narrative work quietly unfolds from the decaying corpse of their confrontation. The artist develops his own software tools for video production: incorporating a video game engine that allows him to improvise in real time with detailed 3D animations, Li Yi-Fan reflects on both the strange suspension of time and space within games, but also on the increasingly detailed desires that arise from increasingly complex technical tools. The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) announced its selection of Li Yi-Fan as the artist for the next Taiwan Pavilion collateral event at the 61st Venice Biennale.
Josèfa Ntjam
October 3–January 11
Josèfa Ntjam is an artist, performer and writer whose practice combines sculpture, photomontage, film and sound. Gleaning the raw material of her work from the internet, books on natural sciences and photographic archives, Josèfa Ntjam uses assemblage as a method to deconstruct the grand narratives underlying hegemonic discourses on origin, identity and race. Her work weaves multiple narratives drawn from investigations into historical events, scientific functions and philosophical concepts, to which she confronts references to African mythology, ancestral rituals, religious symbolism and science-fiction. From there, Josèfa Ntjam composes utopian cartographies and ontological fictions in which technological fantasy, intergalactic voyages and hypothetical underwater civilizations become the matrix for a practice of emancipation that promotes the emergence of inclusive, processual and resilient communities.
Galeries Nomades
October 5–November 2
With: Agathe Berthou, Thibaud Duffet, Laurine Habert, Colin Riccobene
The Galeries Nomades program, initiated by the IAC in 2007, takes place during odd-numbered years to support the production and conception of monographic projects by artists who graduated one to two years ago from one of the five art schools in the region.
The curatorial work is carried out by the IAC in close collaboration with its partners. Exchanges are fostered through the artists’ six-week production residency at the Albert Gleizes Foundation in Moly-Sabata. The exhibitions will be held at two venues: the Centre d’art et de rencontres CURIOX in Ugine, Savoie, and the Maison Forte de Hautetour in Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, Haute-Savoie.
