PARIS.- In 2025, the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès is continuing its Artists’ Residencies programme under the artistic direction of Emmanuelle Luciani. This spring, two artists are invited to Hermès workshops to develop each a project : Salomé Chatriot at the Maroquinerie de la Sormonne (Ardennes) and Jacopo Pagin at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis (Moselle).

The Fondation d’entreprise Hermès has long committed to supporting the making of new work in the contemporary arts. Since 2010, the Foundation has developed a programme of Artists’ Residencies at house of Hermès workshops across France. Visual artists work alongside craftspeople, discovering and implementing their skills and gestures. The invited artists devise original artworks using exceptional, fine materials such as silk, silver, leather and crystal.

In 2024, the Foundation appointed curator Emmanuelle Luciani to select and mentor four artists throughout the programme’s fifth cycle of residencies. “The house of Hermès has a unique relationship with the concept of time, and it was this that inspired the focus of my proposal for the 2024-25 cycle of residencies, titled ‘Past-Present-Future’, in reference to the famous quote by Saint Augustin: “…there be three times; a present of things past, a present of things present, and a present of things future”. The Hermès workshops are places that look back and forward in time, from conservation to present-day transmission, and innovation. In this extended relationship with time, the past, present and future overlap,” explains Emmanuelle Luciani who aims to showcase a fertile blend of artisan techniques and artistic vision.

Beginning in spring 2025, artist Salomé Chatriot will work in residence at the Maroquinerie de la Sormonne, in the Ardennes (eastern France), while painter Jacopo Pagin works at the Cristallerie Saint-Louis, in Saint-Louis-lès-Bitches, Moselle. These two residencies complete the 2024-25 cycle, following Jenna Kaës at the Maroquinerie de la Tardoire (Charente) and Mounir Ayache at Holding Textile Hermès (Rhône) in 2024.

Each residency offers complete artistic freedom, with the aim of encouraging creativity as artists try their hand at new techniques, opening up their practice to previously unknown skills and expertise. The resulting works – the products of a fruitful dialogue between artist and artisans – exist in two versions: one remains the property of the artist while the other enters the collection of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, for public display in partnership with cultural institutions in each workshop’s home region. Each cycle of residencies is documented in an accompanying publication that retraces the creative process for artist and artisans alike.

1. In Confessions, book XI, Saint Augustin (354-430 CE)

Each residency offers complete artistic freedom, with the aim of encouraging creativity as artists try their hand at new techniques, opening up their practice to previously unknown skills and expertise. The resulting works – the products of a fruitful dialogue between artist and artisans – exist in two versions: one remains the property of the artist while the other enters the collection of the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès, for public display in partnership with cultural institutions in each workshop’s home region. Each cycle of residencies is documented in an accompanying publication that retraces the creative process for artist and artisans alike.