Meet Villa Albertine’s 2026 French Immersion Exhibition grant winners.
Launched in 2024, the Immersive Exhibition Grants for Cultural Institutions and Venues aim to support American organizations in presenting cutting-edge immersive works. Each selected institution receives a $10,000 grant to bring French XR productions to U.S. audiences.
This year, 15 applications represented a wide range of innovative projects from 10 U.S. states, including California, New Jersey, Georgia, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Louisiana, Michigan, and Illinois, illustrating a beautiful geographical diversity across the United States. All came from prestigious and renowned institutions and universities, considered to be essential cultural laboratories at the forefront of innovation!
A distinguished jury, composed of Dominique Moulon, Alice Scope, Philippe Rivière, and Birney Robert, has selected four outstanding institutions to receive this support.
The projects demonstrate great creative richness and remarkable diversity in the use of technology, including immersive dome experiences, projection mapping, interactive and immersive installations, multi-user VR experiences, XR dance performances, augmented reality works, 360° VR content, virtual reality musical experiences, immersive cinema, live coding performances, and augmented ballet.
The Cultural and Creative Industries Program (PICC) is part of the government’s strategy to support and relaunch the export of French cultural and creative industries, as well as to strengthen the Institut français’ strategy for supporting the CCIs.
Explore the full list of grantees below and stay tuned for exciting updates on their upcoming VR exhibitions!
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
New York City
"Playing with Fire"
See more
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City is one of the world’s foremost cultural institutions, home to renowned organizations such as the Met Opera and NY Philharmonic.
It serves as a hub for artistic innovation, education, and live performance, such as theater, dance, film, and technology. Through its campus and programming, Lincoln Center fosters interdisciplinary collaboration embracing immersive and XR art as part of its evolving cultural programming.
The institution will present the U.S. premiere of Playing with Fire in late fall 2026—a 3–4 week immersive concert experience at Sidewalk Studio, David Geffen Hall.
Audience members wear VR headsets to enter a multi-sensory environment where they can observe Yuja’s backstage preparations, experience an intimate virtual rehearsal, and witness her live performance from unprecedented closeness. Directed by award-winning immersive artist Pierre-Alain Giraud, the piece uses advanced self-playing technology to reproduce Yuja Wang playing in real-time, synchronized with holographic visuals of her hands, offering listeners insight into her creative process. It offers a new concert format that merges visuals, technology, music, and immersive storytelling to deepen the audience’s engagement with classical music and Yuja Wang’s artistry in a novel, interactive way.
- Duration: 50 minutes
- Year of Creation: 2025
- Format: Multi-user XR experience – 10–12 viewers per session (2,000–2,500 total)
- Production: Atlas V, Vive Arts
- Artist(s): Yuja Wang & Pierre-Alain Giraud
- Prize: Best Immersive Work Award at Cannes 2024
Image: View of the installation Playing with Fire (3D sketch) © AI-generated graphics / Clément Deneux
MAD Arts
Dania Beach (Florida)
"LILITH.AEON"
See more
MAD Arts is an immersive hub where art and technology converge. Showcasing large-scale interactive installations, thought-provoking exhibitions, and experimental works, the space fosters creativity and innovation. Artists benefit from access to an in-house lab, dedicated studios, and collaborative resources. MAD arts focuses on educational initiatives, inclusive programming, and career development, grounded in the philosophy that art and technology should be accessible tools for social good.
In 2026, the center will present LILITH.AEON, an interactive walking experience blending extended reality (XR), dance, and artificial intelligence (AI). Created by the artistic co-directors Esteban Lecoq and Aoi Nakamura of the AΦE Company, the installation invites viewers to follow the true story of the youngest person ever cryogenically preserved: Lilith, a virtual being, a soul suspended between death and a possible future awakening. The audience experiences the story inside a large LED cube where their gestures influence Lilith’s choreographic responses in real-time, creating a dynamic interaction between human and machine.
In this immersive environment, visitors are invited to contemplate the shifting boundaries between flesh, spirit, and code. As technology promises to transcend our biological limits, the installation asks: what becomes of our humanity when even our essence can be rewritten into data?
- Duration: 60 minutes, up to eight shows a day
- Year of Creation: 2024
- Format: Immersive XR dance experience. This is a walk-through experience. No seating is required.
- Production: AΦE Company
- Artist(s): Aoi Nakamura & Esteban Lecoq
- Prize: 2024 pépite de danse animée – Festival International de Danse Animée Awards
Image: @SHANEEOBENSON
Gray Area
San Francisco, California
"Unnatural – of humus and artifact"
See more
Gray Area is a pioneering San Francisco–based cultural and educational nonprofit that operates at the intersection of art, technology, and social progress. It serves as both a creative incubator and public center dedicated to fostering innovation through digital and immersive media, presenting immersive exhibitions, performances, and workshops that support experimental media and uplift underrepresented voices. In 2025, with support from the French Immersion Exhibition Grant, Gray Area exhibited The Siren, an interactive video game by French artist Mélanie Courtinat.
Located in the Mission District, Gray Area confronts the inequities of digital technology by broadening access, nurturing critical dialogue, and advancing digital equity within the mixed-income, immigrant, and Latino communities.
In 2026, the institution welcomes Unnatural – of humus and artifact, an interactive artwork by French XR artist Sandrine Deumier. The piece constructs a fictional human society situated in a natural environment devoid of industrial infrastructure, suggesting a post-human condition where organic and artificial forms of existence coexist symbiotically.
Presented as an interactive fiction in the point-and-click gameplay with advanced 3D visuals, the work invites users to immerse themselves in a speculative world where distinctions between biological life (humus) and artificial creation (artifact) blur, exploring questions of spirituality, ecology, knowledge transmission, and the redefinition of “life” in an age of technological synthesis. The viewer becomes an active participant, navigating a space of transient identities and ambiguous ecosystems where human presence dissolves into digital.
- Duration: 60 minutes, up to eight shows a day
- Year of Creation: 2023
- Format: Interactive XR fiction, real-time simulation, immersive installation
- Production: Sandrine Deumier
- Artist: Sandrine Deumier
Image: @ Sandrine Deumier 2023
Onassis ONX
New York City
"KATABASIS"
See more
The Cultural and Creative Industries Program (PICC) is part of the government’s strategy to support and relaunch the export of French cultural and creative industries, as well as to strengthen the Institut français’ strategy for supporting the CCIs.ONX (Onassis ONX) is a production exhibition platform run by the Onassis Foundation (Onassis Culture) in collaboration with NEW INC, among others. It supports artists working in XR, immersive media, AI, digital culture, and hybrid art forms globally. It offers residencies, seed funding, production support, and mentorship, enabling artists to develop immersive installations, performances, and interactive works.
The institution obtains the privilege of presenting KATABASIS, an immersive VR documentary exploring New York City’s underground spaces. Created by the French artist and filmmaker Ugo Arsac, it explores the mythological motif of “katabasis” — a descent into the underworld — which offers a different perspective on New York. Far from the skyscrapers and bustling streets, it explores the invisible margins of the contemporary city.
The project offers viewers the freedom to build their own path. Dynamic storytelling rules are programmed to organize how the characters appear, depending on the user’s choices. The protagonists are presented as volumetric holograms, recreating a sense of human presence, while the sounds are recorded in situ using a wide range of microphones. Testimonies resonate with one another, creating an experience that inspires a desire to keep going further. Beyond a simple sociological study, the work offers a poetic and sensitive immersion into the human and urban depths.
Ugo Arsac is a visual and digital artist based in Marseille, recognized as one of the emerging voices in contemporary immersive art and a rising figure in the realm of innovative storytelling. He is currently a new media resident at Villa Albertine. His work, at the intersection of mythology, anthropology, and exploration, captivates through its formal rigor and poetic resonance. Arsac produces films, installations, XR experiences, and graphic works, which have been showcased at major festivals and venues worldwide.
- Duration: 30 minutes
- Year of creation: 2025
- Format: Immersive VR documentary
- Production: Zorba and Adventice
- Artist: Ugo Arsac
- Prize : 2024 Circle Incubator – Tribeca Festival
Image: ©Ugo Arsac – Katabasis
