FRAC Champagne-Ardenne

FRAC Champagne-Ardenne is happy to announce the appointment of Bérénice Saliou as its new director.

BIOGRAPHY

Bérénice Saliou is a curator and a member of AICA and C-E-A. After completing a Master’s degree in Visual Arts at the University of Provence, a Master’s degree in Cultural Professions at the University of Lille 3 and a Master’s degree in Curating at Goldsmiths College in London, she co-founded the Trankat artists’ residence in the medina of Tétouan (Morocco) with the artist Younès Rahmoun, which she directed from 2010 to 2015, while simultaneously being Head of International Projects at FRAEME at La Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille.

From 2015 to 2022, she was artistic director of the Institut des Cultures d’Islam (ICI), a cultural institution of the city of Paris. Through the organisation of exhibitions, the production of works of art and projects (including monumental works and works in the public space), the programming of numerous events across all disciplines, and the implementation of Artistic and Cultural Education projects, she created a space for expression for artists of the so-called South.
Particularly concerned with issues of transmission, mediation and interdisciplinarity, for the past fifteen years she has been working to raise the profile of artists, particularly from non-Western countries. She has supported the production of works by Bertille Bak, Sabrina Belouaar, Tarek Benaoum, Yane Cavlovski, Jordi Colomer, gethan&myles, Chourouk Hriech, Mehdi-Georges Lahlou, Katia Kameli, Smaïl Kanouté, Hervé Yamguen and Hervé Youmbi, Salifou Lindou, Maryanto, Randa Maroufi, Ruangrupa, Josefa Ntjam, Sara Ouhaddou, Moussa Sarr, Laetitia Tura and Hossein Valamanesh, among others.

Also an independent curator, in 2022 she co-curated with Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and artistic director of the Sao Paulo Biennale 2025, the inaugural exhibition of the Fondation H in Madagascar, dedicated to the Madagascan artist Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo, known as Madame Zo. From 2022 to 2025, she directed Documents d’artistes La Réunion, where she established an editorial line conceived as a tool for visibility, distribution and support for the island’s artists, with a view to developing the association on an Indian Ocean scale.

POETICS OF ATTENTION

Bérénice Saliou’s artistic project for FRAC Champagne-Ardenne aims to develop a Poetics of Attention in the face of the ecological, social and geopolitical challenges of an increasingly polarised world. Based on the principle that artists are watchmen who encourage us to slow down, observe and analyse, attention is seen as a transformative agent, specific to the art system. This project is therefore based on the principle of paying attention to our co-presence in the world, to our responsibility towards ourselves and others, including non-humans and, more broadly, the world we inhabit.

The exhibition policy will be structured around a programme of associate artists and companionship for emerging artists, based on the FRAC’s collection, regarded as the beating heart of a flexible, open and mobile organisation. The collection will be open to current artistic practices that are multi-disciplinary, porous, transmedia and embrace the artisanal gesture, with an equal and decentralised approach that strikes a balance between French and international artists.

FRAC Champagne-Ardenne will instil a poetics of attention in all its dimensions: towards the public, the artists, the works, the partners and the team that runs it, for a sustainable, collaborative and resilient institution, firmly rooted in its territory.

Bérénice Saliou will assume her position as director in May 2025. She succeeds Marie Griffay, who directed the institution from 2017 to 2024.

FRAC warmly thanks Marie Griffay for her seven years of creative, ambitious and generous programming for artists and audiences. With flagship projects such as CARF, the FRAC’s annual magazine, Video Club, a programme of exhibitions dedicated to emerging creation, Bouge ton FRAC, a space for discovery and conviviality, and an inclusive and committed acquisition policy, Marie Griffay has helped to make the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne a place where art and culture are created and shared with and for everyone.