{"id":9000181,"date":"2026-09-30T19:19:42","date_gmt":"2026-09-30T19:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/?post_type=app_event&#038;p=9000181"},"modified":"2026-09-30T21:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T21:47:15","slug":"valentin-noujaim-la-defense-at-the-des-moines-art-center","status":"publish","type":"app_event","link":"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/events\/valentin-noujaim-la-defense-at-the-des-moines-art-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentin Nouja\u00efm: La D\u00e9fense"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The <strong>Des Moines Art Center<\/strong> presents <em>Valentin Nouja\u00efm: La D\u00e9fense<\/em>, an exhibition devoted to the work of <strong>French-Lebanese filmmaker and artist Valentin Nouja\u00efm<\/strong>. On view <strong>September 10\u2013December 6, 2026<\/strong>, the exhibition brings together his three-part film series exploring Paris from its margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The trilogy takes its name from <strong>La D\u00e9fense<\/strong>, Paris\u2019s vast business district of glass-and-steel towers. For Nouja\u00efm, this highly constructed landscape becomes a stage for stories of displacement, suspicion, and resistance.<br>The series opens with <em>Pacific Club<\/em> (2022), which revisits the story of a nightclub that operated in an underground parking garage in the 1980s and became a gathering place for young people of Arab descent from the Paris suburbs. <em>Volume 2: To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion<\/em> (2024) turns to surreal fiction, following a businesswoman who fantasizes about destroying the office tower she has been hired to sell. In <em>Volume 3: Demons to Diamonds<\/em> (2025), Nouja\u00efm imagines an unsettling La D\u00e9fense where, every day at 6:59 p.m., a worker takes their own life. Together, the three films explore <strong>alienation, isolation, and paranoia<\/strong>, while placing characters who challenge the systems around them at the heart of the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Trained as a filmmaker, Nouja\u00efm creates immersive, cinematic works that draw on <strong>film noir, documentary, and dystopian fiction<\/strong> to explore alienation, identity, and what it means to be an outsider in contemporary France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Curated by Associate Curator Ashton Cooper. Support for this exhibition is provided by <a href=\"https:\/\/albertinefoundation.org\/albertine-grants\/albertine-visual-arts\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/albertinefoundation.org\/albertine-grants\/albertine-visual-arts\/\"><strong>Albertine Visual Arts<\/strong><\/a>, a program of Albertine Foundation and Villa Albertine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":9000182,"menu_order":0,"template":"","app_discipline":[218],"app_city_tax":[223],"app_event_type":[242],"class_list":["post-9000181","app_event","type-app_event","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","app_discipline-visual-arts","app_city_tax-chi","app_event_type-exhibition"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Valentin Nouja\u00efm: La D\u00e9fense - Villa Albertine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"At the Des Moines Art Center, French Lebanese artist Valentin Nouja\u00efm turns Paris&#039;s La D\u00e9fense business district into the setting of a film trilogy about belonging, alienation, and resistance.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/villa-albertine.org\/va\/events\/valentin-noujaim-la-defense-at-the-des-moines-art-center\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Valentin Nouja\u00efm: La D\u00e9fense - 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