Johanna & Esther Mirabel - Villa Albertine

“We aim to think a visual and sociological work capable of revealing the layers of memory buried within the urban fabric through traditions, flows, and bodies in motion.”

Who?

We are twin sisters, Johanna Mirabel, a visual artist, and Esther Mirabel, an interior architect and designer. Our joint practice emerged from a dialogue between our respective disciplines: painting, sculpture, and architecture. For several years, we have been developing hybrid works together—between installation, scenography, and sensitive cartography—that explore the memory of places and collective imaginaries.

Our paths are guided by a particular attention to spaces that are traversed, inhabited, vanished, or transformed. The idea of memory—both individual and collective—serves as a recurring thread in our work. We have notably worked on the concept of memory palaces (or the method of loci), in connection with the writings of Frances Yates, to conceive works anchored in a sensitive, emotional, and sometimes fictional spatiality.

We are interested in non-linear forms of memory: overlays, drifts, omissions, and reinventions. Through in situ installations such as Folie à deux (Galerie Nathalie Obadia, 2024) or Memory Palace (Fondation H and Emerige, 2023), we have created devices where intimate memory, psychogeographic mapping, and spirituality intertwine.

This collaborative work is a co-construction: we share our perceptions and memories, and places become structures to reactivate and reconstruct. Our residency project fully aligns with this approach, aiming to reveal the invisible landscapes of a territory through the stories, flows, and gestures of those who inhabit it.

Johanna Mirabel graduated from the Beaux‑Arts de Paris. A visual artist and recipient of the 2023 Emerige Grant, she will present the exhibition Adieu la chair at Galerie Nathalie Obadia in 2024. Her work has also been shown at MOCO and the Fondation H.

Esther Mirabel graduated from the École Boulle. An interior architect and designer, she founded Mirabel Studio, which has been recognized for projects combining art, design, and scenography. She develops sculptural and architectural installations based on narratives and sensitive memories.

What?

We will examine the connections between spirituality, collective memory, and urban morphology through local events such as the Miami Carnival, the Coconut Grove Mardi Gras, Calle Ocho, and Haitian and Cuban diasporic celebrations. These events are envisioned as “memory nodes,” convergence points where individual and collective narratives inscribe themselves within urban space.

During the residency, we will conduct surveys, interviews, and sensory recordings—sonic, graphic, and cartographic—in various multicultural neighborhoods of Miami. These materials will be integrated into the design of a visual atlas and sculptural installations intended for future exhibitions. This corpus will combine modular architectural forms, anamorphic mural painting, oral narratives, and memorial fragments.

This project explores how traditions transform and embed themselves within the city through moving bodies. Our goal is to create a work that is both artistic and sociological, capable of making visible the layers of memory buried within the urban fabric.

Where?

We have chosen Miami as our research site for its cultural richness, diasporic diversity, and hybrid urban identity. A palimpsest city where Caribbean, South American, and North American influences coexist, it offers an ideal territory for our study of “invisible landscapes.”

Through its carnivals, parades, and community celebrations, Miami is the stage for living cultural practices, continuously reinvented in a migratory context. We will observe how residents of neighborhoods such as Little Havana, Little Haiti, and Liberty City inhabit and transform public space, temporarily shaping an active memory of the city.

We plan to meet Germane Barnes — architect, designer, and professor at the University of Miami, whose work interrogates urban identity and architectural memory — to discuss the links between architecture, identity, and urban rituals. We will also visit leading institutions such as the Pérez Art Museum, the Norton Museum, and the Rubell Museum to enrich our artistic, sociological, and urbanistic reflections.

These meetings and visits aim to deepen our understanding of the cultural, social, and political dynamics that shape Miami. Architects, artists, researchers, choreographers, and community leaders are all potential interlocutors who can enrich our work. We will explore the performative dimension of the Coconut Grove Carnival, Calle Ocho, and Haitian and Cuban demonstrations.

Our approach is to capture how these festive and ritual practices shape space and feed the collective imagination. This connection between art, architecture, memory, and society anchors our project in American cultural realities, invoking bodies, narratives, and architecture as vectors of living memory.

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