Event | Guided tour Fri 24 Nov 2023 – Sun 21 Apr 2024
On Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, at 2pm, 3pm and 4pm

Discover the place where the artists of the exhibition lived and worked!
The house is located at 3, rue de Cloître in Arles.

To book your guided tour, see the Practical Information section. 👉

 

 

Project background

Ahead of Maja Hoffmann’s, President of the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles and Founder of LUMA, 2018 invitation for american artist Laura Owens to exhibit her work alongside Van Gogh’s, the American artist, having visited Arles as a teenager and several times in her life, deeply admired his intentions for communal living, and creating, in the French city. As she started to conceptualise exhibiting her work alongside that of the Dutch painter, and began reading Van Gogh’s correspondence, Owens developed an invested interest in the thinking behind his dreams of a ‘studio in the South’. Inspired by Maja Hoffmann’s vision for the LUMA Foundation in Arles, it was a natural step for Owens and Hoffmann to collaborate with one another and for the LUMA Foundation to to fund and delegate Julie Boukobza of Luma Arles to manage the Studio of the South residency located in a private house on rue du Cloître.

In 2020 Owens moved to Arles to begin working on her show with the Fondation, scheduled to open the same year, although postponed due to COVID-19 restrictions. In a dialogue with LUMA, she then began to invite artists local to France to join her in Arles, whilst continuing to conceive the body of work that would eventually be exhibited at her show the following year. Over the summer Owens created handmade ceramics, elaborate site-specific mosaics, silk-screened curtains, hand-embroidered pillows, paintings, drawings and murals on the walls for the residence.

She subsequently invited 23 artists – collaborators, friends and pupils – to continue the project up to its conclusion in July 2023. During their stays, which ranged in length from a few weeks to several months, these artists lived and worked in the house, in most cases one after the other, although occasionally at the same time. The domestic environment of this house-cum-studio was thus shaped by the imprints that each person left behind. It was invested and embellished with multiple artistic contributions – drawings and paintings on the walls, installations in situ, texts, newspapers, collages, painted furniture – and animated by events programmed by the residents.

By inhabiting the house, the artists gradually transformed it into a global and collective work of art.
The house is open to the public from 24 Nov. 2023 until 21 April 2024.