Official Communique: Émilie Renard, appointed Director of Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research

Official Communique

Mathilde Villeneuve, President of the asso­ci­a­tion Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research, and the mem­bers of the exec­u­tive board are pleased to announce the nom­i­na­tion of Émilie Renard to the direc­tion of Bétonsalon, labeled a con­tem­po­rary art center of national interest, and her arrival as of January.
Roselyne Bachelot, Minister of Culture, in full agree­ment with Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, has given her approval to this nom­i­na­tion, in accor­dance with the unan­i­mous pro­posal of the jury held on November 23.
The jury was par­tic­u­larly appre­cia­tive of Émilie Renard’s pro­ject’s com­mit­ment to co-cre­ation prac­tices and its hos­pi­tality dimen­sion, its open­ness to the local ter­ri­tory, par­tic­u­larly in con­nec­tion with the University of Paris (Campus Grands Moulins), and its influ­ence on a Parisian, national and inter­na­tional scale. Deeply rooted in the polit­ical, social and his­tor­ical debates that cross our society, this pro­ject also aims to make Bétonsalon a space ded­i­cated to exper­i­men­ta­tion, a time for artistic expe­ri­ence, as well as a sounding board for the reflec­tions of visual arts actors.
On the strength of her pre­vious expe­ri­ences, Émilie Renard will be atten­tive to the need to com­bine artistic pro­gram and gov­er­nance within an eth­ical and sol­idary cul­tural struc­ture. Highly invested in pro­fes­sional net­works as well as with artists, she is com­mitted to the social ter­rain of art work. Her pro­ject renews the art center model and offers promising artistic, intel­lec­tual and polit­ical per­spec­tives.
Curator and art critic since 2000, Émilie Renard is cur­rently asso­ciate curator of La Criée, con­tem­po­rary art center of Rennes. From 2012 to 2018, she directed La Galerie, con­tem­po­rary art center of Noisy-le-Sec and in 2012, she was asso­ciate curator of the Paris Triennial with Mélanie Bouteloup, Claire Staebler, Abdellah Karroum and Okwui Enwezor, its artistic director.

The mem­bers of the exec­u­tive board of Bétonsalon - Center for Art and Research

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Émilie Renard

Émilie Renard has mostly been a curator and art critic since 2000. She is cur­rently asso­ci­ated with La Criée, con­tem­po­rary art center in Rennes, with a series of exhi­bi­tions, events, research on the ver­nac­ular and its rela­tion­ship to con­tem­po­rary artistic cre­ation. Her research is based on the power of art to rep­re­sent and act within the struc­tures of the imag­i­na­tion and society. In an insti­tu­tional con­text, at the direc­tion of La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre, Noisy-le-Sec, 2013-2018, she has sought to make the artistic pro­gram of the art center a lever to influ­ence the social, aes­thetic and sym­bolic rela­tion­ships between the people who ani­mate it: artists, teams, publics, part­ners. In an inter­sec­tional fem­i­nist approach, she is atten­tive to the ways in which power rela­tions operate within insti­tu­tions, dis­tributing roles and pri­or­i­tizing prac­tices. To over­come these divi­sions, she seeks to con­nect what is sep­a­rate within and around the prac­tices of art: the per­sonnel and the pro­fes­sional, the work of art and its admin­is­tra­tion, the majority and the minority states. In 2009-2012, she was asso­ciate curator to Intense Proximity, La Triennale, Paris, at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, with Mélanie Bouteloup, Claire Staebler, Abdellah Karroum and Okwui Enwezor, artistic director. She also seeks to artic­u­late the art world with the realm of labor and with sol­idary forms of orga­ni­za­tions, by acting within col­lec­tives or by taking part in the mis­sion on “L’auteur et l’acte de créa­tion” (The author and the act of cre­ation) (2019) as well as in the office of d.c.a, an asso­ci­a­tion for the devel­op­ment of art cen­ters in France (2013-2018).