Resident Highlights: 2026 Events Calendar

In Mississippi Watershed, photographer, visual artist and Villa Albertine resident Nicolas Floc’h is unveiling striking monochrome, working with large format works that trace the Mississippi River’s flow. Through his exhibition, he reveals beauty, fragility, and the complex human imprint that shapes our future. 

Inspired by her Villa Albertine residency and extensive research on human-plant relationships in New York, ceramic artist Alice Riehl will present several porcelain mural works at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Accompanied by videos documenting her practice, the installation will offer an immersive look into her creative and working process.

Villa Albertine Miami will celebrate the five years of its residency program with an evening bringing together six residents and former residents: photographer Cédrine Scheidig, artist and architect sister duo Johanna and Esther Mirabel, and filmmaker Ismaël Joffroy Chandoutis, alongside alumni dancer and choreographer duo Marik Renner and Dalia Naous to celebrate Miami as a source of inspiration and creation.

In 2021 and 2022, French-Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza conducted a nomadic residency across the United States, exploring the transformation of the body through encounters, dance and rituals. Deeply inspired by this experience, she created La Nuée, a choreographic piece that explores the figure of the circle and rhythm. It will be presented at the New York Live Arts in March.

2024 Villa Albertine resident and filmmaker Mathilde Lavenne will participate in a panel discussion, “Inside Immersive Worlds: who Tells the Story, with which tools, and for whom” to explore the challenges of immersive creation, from conception to dissemination.

Cartoonist and architect Enrico Pinto, a 2026 Villa Albertine resident in Las Vegas, will present his drawings at the 19th Docomomo International Conference, dedicated to the future of the built environment. His work explores the architecture of Las Vegas through the lens of architect Denise Scott Brown, using his unique illustrative style to transform the city’s urban elements into visions that are both realistic and dreamlike.

Louis Paul-Caron, 2026 Artificial Intelligence resident, and digital artist will participate in the Los Angeles Night of Ideas, an evening dedicated to innovations in arts, culture and ideas, focusing on topics such as AI and ethics, and the climate crisis.

This year’s Night of Ideas San Francisco commences Villa Albertine San Francisco’s 2026 season of artists in residence with a special focus on Eric Blaze. Debuting this line-up of artists, creatives, thinkers, and researchers at North America’s largest Night of Ideas, Blaze will be in conversation with KQED journalist, producer, and hip-hop historian Pendarvis Harshaw, offering insight into his practice and creative influences. The evening will continue in the library atrium, where Blaze will present a live beat-making demonstration before guiding the audience into Night of Ideas SF’s viral-sensation late-night dance party with a live DJ set.

Artist, researcher, and 2023 Villa Albertine resident Chloé Bensahel merges traditional textile practices with cutting-edge technologies to create fabrics that respond to sound, voice, and touch. Now an affiliated researcher at MIT, Chloé Bensahel will preview her latest project—an AI-interactive textile—during MIT Member’s Week.

As part of the inaugural year of Villa Albertine’s Artificial Intelligence special residency, artist and 2026 resident Hanako Murakami will partake in a Villa Albertine hosted evening exploring the frontiers of post-photography and eye-tracking technologies.

Atlanta-based artist Shaniqua Gay will join Villa Albertine 2026 residents and visual artists Alexis Peskine and Armelle Tulunda for a conversation on the cultural, political, and artistic echoes connecting African diasporas and Afro-descendant communities across the Atlantic.

In May, the Oui Design! festival will take place during the NYCxDESIGN Festival to celebrate French craftsmanship and design across New York. Featuring a lineup of exhibitions and events, a one-week exhibition will be launched at Villa Albertine’s headquarters, showcasing five years of the crafts & design residency program’s artworks and objects.

Image: Chantilly chair by Atelier Monier for Edgar Jayet © Pierre-Damien Doucet

During her Villa Albertine residency, designer Juliane Morel explored how sensory environments can support neurodiverse individuals, revealing how spaces shaped through sensory awareness benefit everyone. Her new installation at Saint Joseph’s University will put this research into practice, collaborating with the university to offer students an immersive environment woven from light, projected imagery, sound, spatial design, and scent.

Artist, designer, and 2025 resident Gabriel Fontana’s work focuses on the social and political aspects of design, creating accessible designs, blending sports, popular education, and alternative education styles. In June, he will return to Los Angeles during the World Cup to organize a playful series of sport-related events at the Broad Museum, including workshops, participatory games, performances, and music.

2024 Villa Albertine resident, researcher, and curator Selorm Attikpo obtained a post-residency grant to realize an exhibition on Ghanaian hip-hop history, drawing inspiration from Atlanta’s own preservation efforts. Blending sound archives, photography, film, and ephemera, 10 Years of Yoyo Tinz and 50 Years of Hip-Hop will be shown in 2026 at the ADAMA, while laying the foundations for a future Hip-Hop museum in Ghana.

During his New York residency, filmmaker Ugo Arsac ventured into the city’s hidden tunnels, meeting graffiti writers and urban explorers. KATABASIS, his new immersive virtual reality documentary, is born from the 3D scans and sound recordings of these subterranean worlds. The production will be screened at Onassis ONX, a multidimensional VR exhibition space in New York.

Villa Albertine will mark its fifth anniversary in New York with a landmark celebration featuring Thomas Jolly, the internationally acclaimed artistic director of the 2024 Paris Olympics Opening Ceremony. The program will feature an exclusive performance developed with Villa Albertine residents.

Inspired by his residency immersed in Puerto Rican bomba and its deep ties to Réunionnais maloya, 2025 resident Florient Jousse created Flamboyants!, a theater-music project linking Réunion, Puerto Rico, and Louisiana around Creole identities and shared colonial histories. This theatre piece will be on tour in the U.S. in the Fall 2026.

En Route is an exhibition which will bring together Villa Albertine alumni Geoffroy Mathieu and Yohanne Lamoulère with Atlanta-based photographers Nydia Blas and Joshua Dudley Greer. Developed through residencies in both Marseille and Atlanta, the project engages with a transatlantic portrait of Marseille and Atlanta, revealing unexpected parallels between these two urban “southern capitals”, capturing their communities, histories, and shifting landscapes in a shared visual dialogue.

Artist Raphaël Barontini will present an exhibition weaving together visual art, performance, and historical research centered on créolité. Developed during his New Orleans residency, his project builds on several collaborations with singers from the New Orleans Opera Créole. For this exhibition, Barontini created his own designs and costumes for a special musical program honoring Créole composer Edmond Dédé.

Yvonne Rainer: A Reader is an exhibition curated by Villa Albertine resident, curator, and researcher Arlène Berceliot-Courtin and funded in part by ¡Viva Villa!, the French network of large-scale international residencies, including resident artists of the Villa Medici and the Casa de Velazquez. Focusing on Yvonne Rainer, the exhibition offers a rare, expansive look at one of the most influential figures in postmodern dance. Playing on the double meaning of “reader,” the exhibition weaves together dance, film, performance, video, visual arts, literature, and archival material to illuminate Rainer’s emotionally charged approach to human and social relationships.

For his first solo exhibition, choreographer, and multidisciplinary artist Smaïl Kanouté draws on his Miami and New Orleans residencies, where he researched Vodou dance, philosophy, and community practices. Coming after his performance Chief Scout / Black Indians, his exhibition BLACK ÉGUNS brings together costumes, videos, and sculptural works inspired by New Orleans’ Black Indian traditions and the Égùn dancers of Benin.

In his new exhibit Chef Menteur, artist Léonard Martin unveils photographs, field drawings, and narrative fragments inspired by the New Orleans Carnival, which he studied during his residency. Blending historical symbolism with ecological reflection, Martin’s work traces the myths, rituals, and transformations that animate the city’s legendary celebration. 

Following their unique maritime residency aboard the containership Le Marius, nine Villa Albertine residents will present new works shaped by life at sea. Through photography, installation, sound, and writing, the exhibition reframes global maritime trade and offers fresh artistic perspectives on the ocean as a space of labor, transformation and ecological questioning.

During his residency, designer and typographer François Chastanet cycled through Philadelphia, documenting the signatures of local wall writers. Along his work online, he will share the results of his immersive fieldwork at the École des Arts Décoratifs in February.

Artist and researcher SMITH explored the West Coast during his 2023 residency, creating a photographic series exploring memory, territory and the invisible, through thermal photographs and video recordings. The subsequent works will be presented for the first time at the MAC VAL during a solo exhibition in 2026.

Ceramic artist Alice Riehl will present a new mural created for the Musée de la Toile de Jouy, inspired by her Villa Albertine research into the relationships between human life and plant life in New York City. The exhibition will also feature video interviews recorded with her New York collaborators, creating a cross-continental dialogue between craft, ecology, and urban nature.

Drawing from their residency on the prosody of American stand-up comedy, Christophe Chassol and Boris Memmi will premiere their new album Funny How? at the Philharmonie de Paris in April. Using Chassol’s signature “Ultrascore” method, the duo transforms comedic speech patterns into orchestral compositions, offering two evenings of musical experimentation at the Philharmonie de Paris.

En Route is an exhibition which will bring together Villa Albertine alumni Geoffroy Mathieu and Yohanne Lamoulère with Atlanta-based photographers Nydia Blas and Joshua Dudley Greer. Developed through residencies in both Marseille and Atlanta, the project engages with a transatlantic portrait of Marseille and Atlanta, revealing unexpected parallels between these two urban “southern capitals”, capturing their communities, histories, and shifting landscapes in a shared visual dialogue. 

During her Villa Albertine residency, Marina Chiche explored questions of gender and diversity in classical music through a transatlantic perspective. Using her residency research, she has curated a concert on forgotten legendary female composers, which will go on tour with the Ensemble of the Rouen Normandie Opera in Spring of 2026. Marina Chiche will perform solos and direct the concerts.

Villa Albertine will mark its fifth anniversary with an evening of conversations, performances, and musical activations at the prestigious Institut de France in the heart of Paris.

During her 2023 residency, artist and activist Laila Hida explored the colonial and neo-orientalist imagery surrounding palm trees and the concept of “oasis” in Los Angeles. These explorations nurtured her larger work Le Voyage du Phoenix on the fabrication of colonial imageries in literature and photographs of the 19th century. This exhibition will be on display at the Jeu de Paume of Tours in 2026.

Since the creation of Villa Albertine, the partnership with the New Orleans Jazz Museum has made it possible to host French jazz musicians in New Orleans for immersive residencies. These artists have conducted research, engaged and connected with local cultural leaders and renowned musicians, and explored the museum’s archives and community networks, deepening their artistic practice through the city’s living heritage. The New Orleans Jazz Museum is proud to present the result of this collaboration on stage at Jazz à Vienne in 2026. On July 8 at the Théâtre François Ponsard, three former residents, Sélène Saint-Aimé, Tiss Rodriguez, and Anne Paceo, will join legendary New Orleans trumpeter James Andrews for a unique, celebratory performance that embodies the transatlantic dialogue at the heart of this partnership.

Writer and editor Lydia Amarouche deepened her thinking on independent publishing during her residency in Atlanta and Los Angeles. Her encounters led to a new collaboration between Marseille’s Shed Publishing and New York’s Wendy’s Subway. In July, they will launch a bilingual project with workshops and public programs examining the ecologies and economies of small-press publishing.

¡Viva Villa! is a network of French artists-in-residency programs abroad — Casa de Velázquez, Villa Kujoyama, Villa Medici, Villa Albertine, Villa Swagatam, and Villa Hegra — promoting the works of their resident artists across France. The 2026 edition will be held in October 2026, at La Gaité Lyrique in Paris.

Curator Marine Kisiel will present Un vestiaire à soi. Féminités dissidentes au XIXe siècle, an exhibition influenced by her research in New York and San Francisco on queer reinterpretations of fashion history.