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<p>As the celebrated Rencontres d’Arles open, discover the city’s key cultural players</p>
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Soizic Pineau

How Arles became one of the most dynamic cultural centers in the South of France

<p>Arles has always been a bit different. It is the perfect combination of buildings teeming with history, marshy countryside, and unusual folklore, which has also been home to fresh, up-to-the-minute cultural offerings for over half a century. Since the mid-1960s, the Rencontres d’Arles photography festival has been held in the city every summer; the publishing house Actes Sud set up shop here in 1983; and the Fondation Vincent van Gogh arrived shortly after, in 1983.</p>
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<p>In recent years, the city has also witnessed the arrival of a multitude of foundations, galleries, and events that have developed an astonishingly rich artistic offering for a town of 55,000 inhabitants. In 2013, the Swiss collector Maja Hoffmann launched LUMA Arles at the Parc des Ateliers – an 11-hectare site encompassing seven renovated former railway factories. The interdisciplinary creative campus subsequently underwent a spectacular development in 2021 with the opening of the LUMA Tower, conceived by the architect Frank Gehry. Then in the spring of 2022, the city welcomed <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7226/Lee-Ufan" target="_blank">Lee Ufan</a> Arles, a museum opened by the South Korean artist dedicated to his own art. This summer, the Fondation Thalie will inaugurate a new pop-up site in the city. So, what makes this little Provencal town so attractive, and what is it that those who set down roots here are looking for?</p>

<p>For Christoph Wiesner, Director of the Rencontres d’Arles since 2021, LUMA was a catalyst: ‘The initiative gave rise to others – it dynamized things.’ Standing 56 meters tall, the LUMA Tower offers breathtaking views of Arles: the old town, with its arenas and UNESCO heritage sites, but also the Rhône river meandering in the distance and the Alpilles mountains on the horizon. From this vantage point, it is easy to see that Arles is more than just a few winding streets. This is the territory on which LUMA Arles has established itself – for in addition to its ambitious programming, the institution strongly supports the environment via research and art commissions.</p>

<p>‘The choice to come to Arles happened naturally,’ says gallery owner Guillaume <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2775/Sultana" target="_blank">Sultana</a>. ‘I am from the South and it is a city I know well. I had my first professional experience at the Rencontres d’Arles. That was in the early 2000s, and the city was nothing like it is now.’ In 2021, he opened Sultana Summer Camp in his apartment in Arles as a summertime extension of his Parisian gallery. Initially conceived as ‘a place for the gallery’s artists to rest and relax,’ the space now occasionally welcomes the public. ‘It is interesting to have a white cube in Paris and develop another model elsewhere – something more convivial and intimate. The discussions it sparks are different.’ The atypical space is well suited to the works of Nanténé Traoré, <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/26101/Jesse-Darling" target="_blank">Jesse Darling</a>, Donna Gottschalk, and <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8494/Dorothy-Iannone" target="_blank">Dorothy Iannone</a>, which will be shown in a group exhibition this summer, conceived in partnership with fellow Parisian galleries <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1325/Air-de-Paris" target="_blank">Air de Paris</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1606/Marcelle-Alix" target="_blank">Marcelle Alix</a>.</p>

<p>‘It allows us to do special things, from a different angle, and with some flexibility,’ says Philippe Joppin, founder of the gallery <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2244/High-Art" target="_blank">High Art</a>, which opened a satellite in a deconsecrated chapel in Arles near the end of 2020. It was a creative choice as well as a strategic one for Joppin, who seeks to ‘avoid seasonality and be part of the city year-round.’ At four hours by train from Paris, halfway between Marseille and Montpellier, with Nîmes and Avignon as its neighbors, Arles is set in a South of France that is rich in art. Joppin also explains that he wanted to ‘bring an international spirit to the area.’ Every spring, the chapel hosts an exhibition conceived in collaboration with a foreign gallery – this year, on view until July, the spotlight has been turned on <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/29309/Nonaka-Hill" target="_blank">Nonaka-Hill</a>, from Los Angeles, and features oil paintings by the Japanese artists <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/53130/Zenzaburo-Kojima" target="_blank">Zenzaburo Kojima</a>, Daisuke Fukunaga, Ulala Imai, and <a href="https://parisplus.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23284/Hiroshi-Sugito" target="_blank">Hiroshi Sugito</a>.</p>

<p>Occupying former Banque de France buildings since 2008, the Fondation Vincent van Gogh has also been tapping into an international spirit, under the bold artistic direction of Bice Curiger. The exhibition ‘Action Geste Peinture’, which opened in early June, honors women working with abstraction: ‘It is a project initiated by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, which seeks to rebalance a history of viewing and reception of this movement that is considered predominantly masculine and American,’ explains curator Julia Marchand.</p>

<p>Openness is decidedly part of the very DNA of Arles. The École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie regularly welcomes foreign students, and artists visiting the city often cross paths with others who come for residencies. Another case in point is the Vague gallery, a discreet but cutting-edge satellite of Teruhiro Yanagihara’s design studio headquartered in Kobe, Japan. Lee Ufan Arles similarly illustrates this international range, with the space, hitherto dedicated to the artist’s own work, hosting its first temporary exhibition beginning in July: Curated by Philippe Dagen, ‘Figures seules’ takes up the theme of the human figure and brings together works by five artists working in France – Brigitte Aubignac, Ymane Chabi-Gara, Marc Desgrandchamps, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7186/Tim-Eitel" target="_blank">Tim Eitel</a>, and <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9070/Djamel-Tatah" target="_blank">Djamel Tatah</a>.</p>
<p>‘It did not happen in a matter of seconds. The initiatives that have been created are truly strong – they have been built over time,’ says Wiesner. The programming for the festival’s 54th edition embodies this shift toward contemporary art, with the presence of artists such as Poland’s Zofia Kulik and Brazil’s <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7626/Ros%C3%A2ngela-Renn%C3%B3" target="_blank">Rosângela Rennó</a>, whose work reflects a contemporary approach to image making.</p>

<p>As with Sultana Summer Camp, elsewhere in Arles art also occupies intimate domestic spaces. This is the case with Margaux Bonopera, who invites artists to stay in her guestroom, while the American painter <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/11701/Laura-Owens" target="_blank">Laura Owens</a>, has led Studio of the South in partnership with LUMA since 2020 – a residency that invites artists (<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/17809/Parker-Ito" target="_blank">Parker Ito</a>, <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/39705/Jad%C3%A9-Fadojutimi" target="_blank">Jadé Fadojutimi</a>, etc.) to produce an in situ piece, most often in the house where they are lodged. Marchand, who directs the exhibition platform Extramentale alongside her work at the Fondation Vincent van Gogh, brings art into a domestic setting too, exploring contemporary and emergent artistic creation through the prism of adolescence – recently, she presented Sophie Crumb’s raw, unpublished drawings in her own apartment. </p>

<p>And so it appears that, beyond the headliners, Arles enables more alternative projects to see the light of day, attesting to the excellent health of its artistic network. Yet another instance of this robustness can be seen in the Atelier du Palais, an artist-run space dedicated to risograph printing – a stencil-based layered printing technique – and desktop publishing.</p>
<p>Amid this abundance of artistic offerings, are there any real exchanges taking place between the different players? ‘It is important to see things in terms of complementarity – there are cross-fertilizations at work,’ says Wiesner. ‘This year, as part of their programming, some of the LUMA exhibitions are very strongly connected to the image.’ One example is the impressive <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9029/Diane-Arbus" target="_blank">Diane Arbus</a> solo exhibition presented by the foundation this summer, which features over 450 prints by the American photographer. However, the dialogue extends beyond the medium of photography, with occasional thematic intersections: For example, Rencontres will feature <a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10415/Agn%C3%A8s-Varda" target="_blank">Agnès Varda</a>’s early photography and her first feature film at the same time as LUMA presents interviews that Hans Ulrich Obrist, a member of the foundation’s artistic board, conducted with the filmmaker.</p>

<p>For Marchand, it is also initiatives like the recent Festival du Dessin [Drawing Festival] in April that create connections, offering an itinerary leading through several of the city’s different institutions. The same could be said of Octobre Numérique [Digital October], which will celebrate its third year this fall, flouting the focus on summer that is still too often de rigueur in the region. ‘There is something magical about this city,’ says Marchand. Is Arles a living laboratory, a place of freedom? ‘That is one of the characteristics one might attribute to Arles,’ concludes Wiesner, ‘its ability to metamorphose and constantly reinvent itself.’</p>

<p>Les Rencontres de la photographie<br>Arles, France<br>From July 3 to September 24, 2023</p>
<p>Soizic Pineau is a freelance writer based in Marseille.</p>
<p>English translation: Jacob Bromberg.</p>
<p>All videos and photos by Baptiste de Ville d’Avray for Art Basel.<br>Caption for full-bleed images, from top to bottom: 1. Arles.&nbsp;2.&nbsp;ENSP Arles - École nationale supérieure de la photographie. 3. Camargue. 4. Fondation Van Gogh, Arles. 5. Detail at l’atelier du palais, Arles. 6. Arles.<br></p>
<p>Published on June 30, 2023.<br></p>

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