Underwater Constellation by Gil Lekh
From July 8 to 12, 2025, the Villa Arson Art Center invites teenagers and adults to participate in the summer school of art practices Underwater Constellation. Proposed by artist Gil Lekh, this summer school is designed as a space-time for learning, creating, and sharing in resonance with the exhibition Becoming Ocean: a social conversation about the Ocean. Entirely free, this event is accessible upon registration.
During five afternoons, participants are invited to develop their artistic singularity by exploring various creative processes: heuristic maps, sculptures, somatic gestures, sensitive writings or drawings, personal narratives. Each workshop, accessible independently or as part of a complete course, will give rise to an individual creation. All the creations will be a collective installation exhibited at the weekend at Villa Arson, participants can then leave with their creations.
Underwater Constellation is an invitation to experiment, imagine and derive together, weaving links between artistic practices, contemporary ecological issues and shared narratives. A week to think, feel, create. Become ocean from the feeling of the ocean.
program
Each afternoon consists of:
– a shared reading of a literary, theoretical or poetic text,
- one or more works from the Becoming Ocean exhibition,
- a body practice,
- a plastic creation workshop to learn techniques (cyanotype, sculpture, installation, writing, publishing, exhibition…).
With texts by: Friendship as a Form of Life, Roberto Bolaño, Auguste Blanqui, Karen Barad, Audre Lorde, Astrida Neimani, Fred Moten & Stefano Harney, Trinh T. minh Ha, Jackie Wang, Dénètem Touam Bona, Julia Kristeva, Claire Bouffay, Paul Gilroy, Gayatri Spivak, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Alexandre-Takuya Kato, Julia Kristeva, Édouard Glissant, Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ocean Vuong, Ursula K. Le Guin, Vinciane Despret, Donna Haraway, Malidoma Somé…
Medium used: drawing, sculpture, installation, writing
Techniques available during the workshop: Plaster casting, collage, assembly, silver foil, micro-editing, writing, dance.
Tuesday, July 8 — Tracing constellations, imagining archipelagos
To register for the workshop on Tuesday, July 8
Wednesday, July 9 — Making the world together: interspecies, interrelations, transformations
To register for the workshop on Wednesday, July 9
Thursday, July 10 — Blue Cosmogonies: learning from the Ocean
To register for the workshop on Thursday, July 10
Friday, July 11 — The hold, the undercommons, submerged memory
To register for the workshop on Friday, July 11
Saturday, July 12 — Being water
To register for the workshop on Saturday, July 12
Practical Information
Free with registration (14 years and over)
No pre-requisites. People in vulnerable situations are welcome (we’ll make sure that conditions are adapted).
After registration, the artist will contact participants to prepare the workshops.