Venue: Fort Saint-Jean / Bâtiment Georges Henri Rivière

Between the end of June and the middle of July 1831, underwater volcanic activity gave rise to a new island in the Mediterranean, in the Sicilian Channel across from Tunisia. While sailors and coastal dwellers feared the awakening of a sea monster, the nascent land aroused the curiosity of scientists and the desire of European powers amid their colonial expansion. Within weeks, the island was claimed for its strategic position by Great Britain, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, among others. The rivalry, however, was short-lived: barely six months after its appearance, the newly formed island vanished beneath the waves of the Mediterranean.

Through films, videos and photographs, Clément Cogitore – an artist with a philosophical approach – speculates on the emergence, collapse, and possible re-emergence of the volcano. Blending documentary and fiction, his metaphorical intuition weaves together premonitions, popular beliefs, archival documents, as well as scientific and cartographic records: in his hands, “Ferdinandea” becomes a mirror reflecting different relationships to the world and possible futures.

Gallifet’s spring exhibition presents a selection of more than one hundred photographs by the French photographer François Halard, including many that will be seen by the public for the first time.

Based between Paris, the south of France and Greece, his work draws on the history and memory of those places – across the globe but so often Mediterranean – that create a common bond, that tell the tale of lives entwined, their past, present and future.

The artist’s impassioned quest for beauty takes us on a journey through the countryside of Greece and Italy, into the studios of some of the last century’s great modernists, to the gardens of Giverny, and inside a house in Arles where unimagined poetry greets us at every turn.

Venue: Mucem, J4

This permanent exhibition showcases what makes up the “bulk” of the museum, telling all the stories that led to the acquisitions, the life stories of the items, and the reasons why they were brought into the museum’s reserves, past and present. Alongside the 1,200 objects and documents from the Mucem’s historical collections or those more recently acquired by the museum, an immersive digital mediation system uses a selection of objects to evoke the idea of ‘popular culture’ that permeates its collections.

An exhibition supported by the Embassy of the Netherlands in France and the Aix-en-Provence Biennale 2026.

Ghita Skali, an artist from Casablanca based in Amsterdam. Her multidisciplinary practice includes installations, videos, and interventions. She draws on strange news items, rumours, and historical facts to disrupt institutional power structures. Her work blends humour and critique, resulting in projects that circulate beyond exhibition spaces, through alternative merchandise trade, (il)legal documents, and objects one takes home.

In her practice, Ghita Skali explores the mechanisms behind the production of official narratives, marginalised or censored histories, and the ways in which fiction seeps into fact, and vice versa. During her residency, Ghita Skali wishes to develop a project around the objects that remain after death. These sometimes trivial items become traces, presences, or, on the contrary, things one tries to forget. As if these objects, already inert and silent, became even more so. In her work, Ghita addresses our fear of illness and our relationship to mourning, these “pains” present in different contexts, which we might share. However, class, gender, race, and other markers of inequality shape and alter our relationships to care and to the living. These situations generate different scales of anger, bitterness, and injustice. But is there something shared, something common, in the sorrow of losing loved ones?

Sessions: Tuesday 3 and 17 February 2025
Exhibition walkthrough: Saturday 23 May & artistic and civic celebration on 14 July
Highlight event as part of the Printemps de l’Art Contemporain PAC festival: Saturday 23 May

Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain invite us for an exploration of a field of stars and an immersion in the mystery of the creation of the universe and the celestial bodies. For more than 20 years, this Franco-Brazilian artist duo has been conducting artistic research into the way we represent the world and how it manifests itself to us. In order to do this, they have created alphabets of shapes that renew our perceptions of our environment, time and space through a unique linguistic and plastic approach.

The exhibition brings to life a landmark installation following on from the Flowering of Light exhibition for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024 at the Centre Pompidou. The Frac Sud plays host to the Prix Marcel Duchamp award artworks, creating a conversation with other pieces exploring the stars and creation of the universe. The exhibition takes us on a journey through the cosmos that whisks us away to a world of stars and flowers, connected to the sun and moon by the trail of light through the ages of creation.

The Field of Stars exhibition was supported by the Instituto Guimarães Rosa and the Brazilian Embassy in Paris
In partnership with Galerie Martine Aboucaya

A Madman’s Tale, a Tale Worth Laughing At. Venue: Mucem, J4 (RDC)

After having honored Jean Genet, Jean Giono and Gustave Flaubert, the Mucem continues its series of literary exhibitions by celebrating a hero born in Spain, who has spread worldwide to the point of becoming a mythical figure: Don Quixote.

In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes created a character who believes himself a knight-errant in a book where he is little more than an antihero. Like an old man returned to childhood, he acts out the tales born of his imagination both “for real” and “for fun”. With his loyal Sancho by his side, he sets out to rescue the oppressed who never called for help and princesses no one else can see. One declaims lofty, antiquated speeches, the other answers with endless chains of proverbs. Together they ride into parodic battles, while the author revels in clever reflections on fiction and on himself.

And yet, over the span of four centuries, the tremors of this laughter, whether mischievous or dizzying, have absorbed the disquiet of modernity: the romantic pursuit of an impossible ideal, metaphysical solitude, the shifting play of illusion and disillusion, and the quiet heroism of failure. In contrast, the exhibition offers an original approach by returning to the comic, unruly and popular dimensions of the work, as well as to its boundless presence across the most diverse artistic forms and within everyday culture.

A unique dialogue between pieces by Japanese artists of different generations. The exhibition explores the emotional, ecological and his-torical bonds that connect us to our habitats, set against our modern lifestyles and the ensuing envi-ronmental disasters which have made these invisible connections both invaluable and unstable.

Based on the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident that hit North East Japan on March 11th 2011, an event that destroyed people’s lives, society and the environment, the exhibition displays pieces crafted post-Fukushima alongside artwork seeped in the history and rapid modernisation of 1970s Japan. The design echoes the FRAC’s architecture by Kengo Kuma and the exhibition demonstrates how the events of March 11th and the pieces they inspired bear the hallmarks of late 20th century Japanese art.

In partnership with Japan Foundation and La Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris

Exhibition supported by the Carte Blanche program, Région Sud

Yuyan Wang is a video artist born in China and based in France. Her work explores the transformation of materials drawn from the image industry, which she deconstructs and reassembles through editing. By diverting images from their original contexts and from the ways they circulate—whether found, altered, or fabricated—she converts them into immersive sensory experiences.

Weather sketches an atmospheric landscape from images gleaned on social media. Captured by anonymous individuals across a scattered cartography, these wandering images—meteorological phenomena, everyday gestures, fleeting moments of contemplation—form the drifting fragments of a shared visual horizon. Stripped of their provenance and of the codified uses of dominant narratives, they gradually reveal affective layers tied to sensibility. In an age of information overload and the general acceleration of time, this fractured panorama invites us to relearn how to inhabit the real.

As part of the Parallèle 16 festival.

Parallèle, in partnership with Château de Servières, La compagnie, lieu de création, art-cade, Juxtapoz/Le Couvent and Sud Side, has launched two open calls for projects aimed at visual artists in the process of professional development. La Relève highlights emerging creation and supports early-career artists by giving them a place on the contemporary art scene. This eighth edition, inaugurated each year as part of the Festival, brings together 15 artists at Château de Servières and La compagnie.

Co-produced with Château de Servières and La compagnie, lieu de création.
With the support of DRAC PACA as part of the Culture Pro programme, the Région Sud as part of the Carte Blanche aux Artistes Arts Visuels programme, and the Fondation de France.

Venue: Mucem, J4 (Galerie des collections – R+2)

The exhibition looks at the way in which the Mediterranean has been constructed as an element of natural, artistic and ethnological heritage – three approaches comparable in construction over time. It shows how museums have presented the Mediterranean theme. The exhibition will present the Mucem and its identity from a historical and disciplinary perspective, demonstrating both its origins and its uniqueness in the museum landscape.

Launched in 2020 by the French Ministry of Culture, L’Été culturel supports artistic projects taking place between July and October. In the PACA region, the program is implemented through the Rouvrir le Monde artist residencies led by the DRAC, promoting access to culture during the summer. Since 2020, Château de Servières has coordinated these residencies in partnership with local sociocultural organizations.

In 2025, nine artists carried out two-week residencies in social centers, care homes for the elderly, and various community organizations, reaching a broad and diverse audience.

Group exhibition featuring Sophie Blet, Rebecca Brueder, Célia Cassaï, Louis Dassé, Théophylle Dcx, Manon Ficuciello, Beatričė Leitonaitė, Adrien Menu, Laurine Schott.