EN
FR 
THE ARTISTS
The exhibition explores how The LINE
unites different ways of seeing,
understanding,
and using this fundamental element
Lana ARONSON
Lana ARONSON finds fascination in “a sea of lines,” represented by overlapping graphics and juxtapositions that form a maze. She explores how different movements merge in time and space, creating illusions of discovery and transparency.
A mixed media of overlapping and combining colours and materials are added to the wood carving’s “backbone”. Various pressing method further introduces different materials allowing a new sensation representing concave, convex, colours, and scale while keeping everything in perpetual motion with light and transparency.
©Helen Margaret GIOVANELLO
Helen Margaret GIOVANELLO
Helen Margaret GIOVANELLO described the horizon as “a line, a thread that unwinds, a journey that becomes a circle, resting within itself.”
Zerumuga | Contemplation:
the boundary of the sky in the Basque language.
Zerumuga represents those almost insignificant and ephemers moments, the eventless instants of our days, those precious moments of rest.
An approach as naturalistic and non-intrusive as possible.
born in London, raised in Italy. After obtaining a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and Humanities from the University of Turin, she graduated from the ICP – International Center of Photography in 1996.
A photojournalist, she document the human condition in an intimate and personal manner. Some of her clients include: The NY Times, Le Monde, Newsweek, Courrier International, L’Espresso…
In 2003, she moved to India and document the lives of sex-workers in the Kamathipura district of Mumbai. Advaita, Vedanta was her immersion into the depths of the human spirit.
In 2007, after three years in Northern Uganda, she settled in Paris. Since 2015, Helen explore a new direction, focusing on a personal authorial photographic approach.
In 2019, her series “The Tree” received the “717 Lobby, ICP Alumni Fellowship Award” from Cushman & Wakefield NY.
©Helen Margaret GIOVANELLO
Marianne Guillou
Marianne Guillou’s creations are participatory, modular installations, in dialogue with architecture.
Her interventions are influenced by changes in the landscape and question our relationship with contemplation.
I designed the scenography for ‘Not Without you my Queen’ in mimicry with the insect I observe.
A swarm of a thousand engravings interspersed between the external light and you.
Marianne Guillou
Involved in an approach where contemporary art and environmental issues are intertwined, the artist chooses the bee, an ecological barometer, as the focus of her research. Marianne Guillou’s projects are driven by the foundational idea of the urgency to preserve wild nature.
Since 2009, she has studied wild bees and beekeeping in France and Greece.
Her works have been exhibited at L’Orangerie de Cachan in 2023, the Biennale de Cachan in 2021, the Biennale de Gentilly—where she won the Young Public Prize in 2019—and at the MacParis Salon in 2017.
A graduate of the Beaux-Arts in Rennes in 1991, she worked in the Ploumanac’h quarries, specializing in direct carving of pink granite under the guidance of Pierre Székely and Masakuni Kitagawa. She has directed the Elzévir Workshop since 1996.
© Magali Leonard
Magali Leonard
Magali Leonard sees the line as a visual and temporal division unfolding in space, where each form is like an event marking its evolution, much like the waves that continually carry her gaze over her surroundings—a permanent flow in the deep blue of the ocean.
Each moment: a visual and temporal segmentation that expands in space.
The line is punctuated by chosen and captured moments, edited into a continuum of contemplative snapshots within a roll of film.
It is as if reality is always in a state of becoming and departure, heading toward the past—what has been seen, encountered, and constantly renewed.
Magali Leonard
“Born in Provence, she studied visual arts at Paris-Sorbonne and obtained a Master’s degree in 1997.
In 2007, an accident transformed her artistic practice and led her to begin her Cosmogonies, a series that evokes the four elements: earth, air, water, and fire, which remain at the heart of her creation.
In 2004, she presented her first solo exhibition in Osaka, marking the beginning of an essential relationship with Japan in her artistic journey.
From 2009 to 2017, several exhibitions in Manhattan took her through Traversées, a contemplative reflection from the windows of slow American trains, where she deepened her exploration of the relationship between space and time.
In 2019, her stay on Hokkaido Island, in northern Japan, offered her the experience of a journey aboard an icebreaker, revealing the vitality of waters interacting with air and ice.
With Coexistence, she settled in 2021 on the Basque coast, at the same latitude as Hokkaido, where she draws from the energy of the ocean’s depths.”
© Laura McCALLUM
Laura McCALLUM
Pull a pencil across paper, and a line emerges.
Exists another way to create a line: by intersecting two planes, which introduces a third dimension. This intersection can yield a sharp line, as seen in the angles of the Great Pyramids, or it may result from the meeting of shallow planes.
This concept of line-making became the focal point of my work this year.
I explored inkless prints—embossing techniques that rely on the delicate intersection of shallow planes to convey line, image, and emotion.
A backdrop of thoughts and emotions guided this series of seemingly simple, reductive shapes : Ultimately, it’s all about quistioning.
Laura McCallum
Laura McCallum began her career as a sculptor and that three-dimensional sensibility guides all her work, which includes wall pieces, collage, printmaking and video art.
A long-time Brooklyn resident, she was born in Oregon and raised there under its Asian-influenced culture. McCallum studied art history and fine arts at Scripps College and the University of Washington and was a professor at Pacific Lutheran University until relocating to Brooklyn to dedicate her work and time to her artmaking.
There she began working with materials often found on the street including slate and tin. Despite New York’s rough urban character, she combatted the fast-paced rhythm of the city with timeless, simple materials. Laura’s work deals with form. She reduces universal themes to essential elements. Devoid of judgment or answers, the work instead is infused with enigmatic symbolism that gives space for the viewer to interpret.
McCallum has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, the Rotunda Gallery, and Long Island University in Brooklyn; Socrates Sculpture Park, St. John the Divine. Her work has also been featured at galleries and arts centers throughout New York, the USA, and Europe.
lauramccallum.net
@lauramccallumartist
20H
PERFORMANCE
Corps en Ligne
©Sikai Li, Jade Tournet, Chris Parrado
CORPS EN LIGNE
Chris Parrado, Jade Tournès, and Sikai Li
electric guitar, voice, and ceramic objects.
An improvisation that explores the movement of the body and subtle internal sounds, creating a landscape that reflects the complexity of the lines that cross and surround us.
The artists interact with each other and the objects, staging the concept of the line as a limit, connection, and barrier. Their gestures and expressions invite the audience to physically feel these invisible lines that define our inner and outer spaces. By merging spontaneity and intention, they create a fleeting moment where movement and matter intertwine, pushing the boundaries of artistic expression.
This improvisation is an invitation to navigate between the contours of the tangible and the intangible, to explore how lines can both separate and unite, form and transform.
THE ARTISTS
SIKAI LI
After studying in China, Sikai Li turned to France to deepen his passion for art and music. Driven by a desire for discovery, his work is an introspective quest focused on contrasts and shadowy areas, aiming to document and distort the invisible.
Fascinated by sonic boundaries, he explores textures, the relationship to the body, violence, and chance in his guitar improvisations. In 2023, he founded Studio Salt Echoes (salt-echoes.com) in the Marais, a space dedicated to sound experimentation.
Combining spontaneous, body-focused approaches with rational and graphic methods, he navigates between sound art and creative coding to push the boundaries of creation.
Jade Tournès
Jade Tournès began studying singing and piano at the age of five. In 2010, she joined the Maîtrise de Radio-France before turning to opera singing. She started her vocal training and studied at the École Normale de Musique de Paris-Alfred Cortot for three years.
At the same time, she discovered electroacoustic composition and quickly devoted herself to this discipline alongside her vocal practice. She has performed in contemporary art pieces as a singer/performer with visual artist Adélaïde Fériot and is also working on composing music for a dance performance by the Quetzal Art company.
Chris PARRADO
A multidisciplinary French and Colombian artist, working in painting, ceramics, and video.
His art explores cultural codes between Europe and Latin America, addressing themes like social dynamics, identity, and human interactions. Drawing from his bicultural experience, Parrado captures fleeting moments of everyday life, transforming them into ethereal reflections on existence.
In addition to his art, Chris leads creative workshops at a day hospital in the Paris region, helping individuals with mental health issues express themselves through art.
An exhibition of their work is planned for 2024.
Chris holds degrees in Advertising and Media from the Central University of Colombia, a Master’s in Design from London, and a Master’s in Interactive Multimedia from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, which enriches his multidisciplinary approach and artistic sensitivity.
NOCTURNE
NOVEMBER 22 2024
19H30
CIAO, BELLA
© Photo par Jean Scanzaroli of René Scanzaroli à L’accordéon Musee de l4histoire Vivante, Montreuil Fond Scanzaroli
A heartfelt tribute
to the Italian artist
GIOVANNA MARINI
who passed away in May of this year.
Giovanna, a guitarist deeply moved by the beauty of Bach since her childhood in a family of musicians, saw her career take a significant turn in the 1960s with the Italian movement now symbolized by “Bella Ciao.” Today, we say to her with emotion: “Ciao, Bella!”
From her beginnings as a classical performer, Giovanna became a committed artist, ethnomusicologist, singer, choir director, composer, and academic. France honored her by welcoming her to Paris VIII University, where she held the chair of ethnomusicology from 1991 to 2000.
In concert at the Théâtre de la Ville with her Quartetto Urbano, her work continues to celebrate popular and social song.
Evviva il canto popolare e sociale, evviva la musical,
E viva Giovanna!
NOTE
“I dischi del sole ” is a prestigious label founded in Milan in the early 1960s with the aim of making known a vast repertoire of popular music , publishing works by a new generation of authors and performers of folk and singer-songwriter songs, social and protest songs , often by unknown authors, music and words as an expression of the most significant moments of our history and our culture .
“ I dischi del sole” are an opportunity to read in a different way the history of men, ideas, and struggles that built our country…”
Ala Bianca has taken on the responsibility of preserving this cultural legacy, not just through conservation, but by ensuring its continued relevance and exposure.
Toni Verona
alabianca.it/it
RESEARCH ARTISTS
&
MUSICIANS
Mireille Esther Gettler Summa
Born in Paris to a mother who emigrated from rural central Italy.
She is affiliated with two CNRS laboratories: Ceremade in mathematics and Modyco in linguistics.
Along with her husband, Pierangelo Summa, she participated in the revival of popular and social singing starting in the 1970s in Italy, where she met Roberto Leydi and other key musicians and singers of that era.
+ about
Mireille Gettler-Summa
Monica Caggiano
holds dual academic degrees in anthropology (Ph.D. from EHESS) and economics
(Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Parthenope in Naples).
As a researcher in France, Italy, and the Netherlands, her current work focuses on collective musical practices
in the
“fabrication of the city.”
For this subject, she conducted fieldwork in Belleville, where she studied the relational dynamics—especially intercultural and territorial—that these practices reflect and engage.
Her critical analysis also highlights their power of resistance and subversion against the logics of the “neoliberal city.”
READ MORE
The music that makes (Belle)ville: an ethnological survey of a Paris neighborhood
Gabriella Merloni
As a singer, Gabriella initially trained in classical vocal techniques before exploring contemporary music, covering a wide repertoire from French chanson classics to Italian folk songs.
As an actress, she performed the solo piece Une femme seule by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, directed by Pierangelo Summa at the Les Déchargeurs theater in 2011.
In 2022, Gabriella also defended a doctoral thesis in theater studies focused on the comedic duos of French and Italian actors in theater and film.
To learn more, visit
gabriellamerloni.com.
Piero Nissim
Piero Nissim is a poet, musician, and artist, convinced that nothing is created; everything is already given. His work involves capturing what exists and giving it new expression.
He was part of the Canzoniere Pisano and later the Nuovo Canzoniere Italiano, before becoming a puppeteer, working closely with children. Their purity helped him retain his own sense of youth.
He rediscovered his Ashkenazi roots through his Lithuanian mother and reintroduced the Yiddish songs of his childhood. His father had taught him the Pisan dialect poems of Renato Fucini, which he recently published as sonnets.
A winner of awards such as the Montale and De André/Poesia.
Piero Nissim views Giovanna Marini as a mentor in both music and life,
reminding him of the importance of genuine listening, beyond modern technology.
Choir
The MEUFS
Choir
LES MEUFS
The Meufs choir, established in 2017 with a chosen mix of members, meets at the social center La Maison du Bas Belleville.
Founded on the desire to create a space of well-being and reflection through music, it performs a diverse repertoire, including rebellious songs from here and abroad, as well as popular and original pieces sung in various languages such as Serbian, Bambara, Napolitan, and Belarusian.
The choir strives to deconstruct social stereotypes by feminizing lyrics and altering those that convey misogynistic and racist messages. Thus, rewriting becomes a symbolic practice of critique and transformation towards a more egalitarian world.
Acknowledgments
Coordination, collaboration and association
with:
Jacques-Elie Chabert
Marie Poinsot
Adeline Lucien
Margalit Berriet
Mémoire de l’avenir – Humanities Arts and Society