Marseille art festival tells migrant stories with an Olympic twist
The Spring Contemporary Art Festival – also known as PAC – showcases emerging and well-known artists around dozens of venues in a three-week festival of creativity across south-east France. This year, with the Olympic Games on the horizon, sport has inspired the program, as well as Marseille's migrant-rich identity.
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Marseille is not historically known as a hotspot for the visual arts. The southern French metropolis's dynamic culture is more centred around food, music, football and its beautiful port and seaside.
But during PAC, more than 160 artists from the emerging French and international scene take centre stage, with free events across the city's cultural venues and public spaces.
Decolonial art
Belsunce, a neighbourhood in the heart of Marseille, is a focal point for the contemporary art festival this year.
La Compagnie is one of Belsunce's iconic galleries participating in PAC.
Gallery director Paul Emmanuel Odin said that he has watched children grow up in the immigrant neighbourhood over the decades.
"They are now 30-years-old, like La Compagnie. They tell us what they care about," he said.
"Our projects obviously have a decolonial dimension due to our location in this district of Marseille. We see ourselves as a refuge for immigrants, artists, queer people, racialised people and the most vulnerable."
La Compagnie's artist in focus, Dalila Mahdjoub, has been linked to the art venue for more than 20 years.
Her show is inspired by a photograph of an internment camp taken in colonial French Algeria by her father and aims to rebalance power in the history of colonisation through language, visuals, films and archives.
"The camp served as one of the prisons during colonial Algeria," Odin added.
"Camps were a tool for controlling the Algerian population, where half of the indigenous population was interned. From that photo and other archives, her exhibition unfolds to other stories."
Also in the centre of Marseille, Oct0 Productions hosts British-Jamaican-Jewish artist Hannah Black's latest show Marked by a Blank or Occupied by a Lie which responds to the war in Gaza.
The Mancunian, who is also a writer, a critic and an activist, moved to Marseille after the 2020 edition of the Manifesta Biennale held in the city.
Other highlights of PAC's 2024 edition include open artist studios and an exhibition at Château de Servières with the photographic and video-graphic work of the French artist Moussa Sarr.
Titled Bamboula, his exhibition includes the French national anthem remixed into party tunes and several rooms with photographs and films responding to his experience of racism as a black man growing up on the French island of Corsica.
The artist is also developing performances, which will be filmed and later shown as video work.
"I work with my body a lot," the artist, who appears in most of his pieces, told RFI.
"There is always a form of humour in my work too, where my body becomes involved in the issues I deal with, the words I dare to use around blackness, racism and decolonial ideas.
"I'm inspired by what I live every day as a black man."
Balls and trophies
During the festival, art venues and cultural centres open their doors with the desire to defend creation, artists, and the spirit of sharing.
Opening events coincided with the preparation of the arrival of the Olympic flame in Marseille.
Many venues were inspired to host exhibitions celebrating the spirit of the games and healthy competition, including the iconic Mucem museum, which opened in 2013 on the coastline in Fort Saint-Jean, Friche La Belle de Mai and FRAC Sud (Contemporary Art Regional Fund).
FRAC will host a conference on "Art, Sea and Sport on 17 May.
At Mucem, the exhibition Exploits, Masterpieces aims to question the relationship between art and sport with more than 350 works by nearly 100 French and foreign artists, blending fascination, criticism and humour.
Organised by the Provence Contemporary Art Network, PAC is running from 2 to 19 May across 60 venues.
As well as Marseille, the festival has events in the towns of Aix-en-Provence, Istres and Rousset.
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