Le Temps de la parole with the Cité internationale des arts

As part of the off-site program for the exhibition To Make Space for the World (October 8, 2026 – January 16, 2027), the Cité internationale des arts is pleased to present a series of talks centered on the open work of Ibrahim Mahama, currently in residence at the Cité on the occasion of his exhibition Le Temps des récoltes at the Fondation Cartier. 

On this occasion, the exhibition’s co-curators, Charles Esche and Chương-Đài Võ, will be in conversation with artists Wendie Zahibo and Taysir Batniji. 

The Cité internationale des arts is the largest artist residency in the world. Since 1965, it has brought together, simultaneously, over 300 artists of all origins, generations, and disciplines in the heart of Paris. It designs an artistic and cultural program that showcases the work of artists, while affirming the role of the residency as a time for dialogue and experimentation.

Chương-Đài Võ is a guest curator at the Ygrec Art Center — the contemporary art center of the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy — where she is a faculty member. Her recent projects include serving as artistic director of the Africa-Asia Festival in Dakar in 2025, and co-editing with Charles Esche the book The Museum is Multiple: Van Abbemuseum 2004–24. Her essays have been published by Afterall, the Albertinum, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA), Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie, Moderna galerija, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. She held a residency at the Cité internationale des arts as part of the 2-12 program (2022–23). 

Charles Esche is an Amsterdam-based writer and curator. He is a member of the L’Internationale association and is developing the Three Ashes Foundation on a site near Bucharest, Romania. He is a professor of contemporary art and curating at the University of the Arts London, an advisor to the Jan van Eyck Academie, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam. He served as director of the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven (2004–2024) and the Rooseum in Malmö (2000–2004). 

Wendie Zahibo is a multidisciplinary artist-researcher working between Guadeloupe and mainland France. Hailing from a family with Ivorian and Central African roots, her work explores identities circulating within the Black Atlantic. A doctoral candidate at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, she began a dissertation entitled “aire-kaz : art et utopies diasporiques dans l’Atlantique noir de 2009 à 2029.” From 2015 to 2022, she led the project Reines des Temps Modernes on Afro-descendant women's narratives, subsequently published Corsé de cuirs (2020), and co-founded the association Bazaart, which develops and supports cultural initiatives between the Caribbean and the international scene (winner of the MansaLab program in 2025). Since 2022, she has been developing masonn, a transmedia research project exploring vernacular architecture and mystical realism. A laureate of the Cité internationale des arts’ ONDES program, she exhibits at the Circulation(s) Festival in 2025 and is undertaking residencies in Côte d'Ivoire and Brazil. 

Taysir Batniji (Gaza, 1966) is a Palestinian artist who lives between France and Palestine. Within this geographic and cultural in-between space, he has developed a multidisciplinary practice centered on the image since 2001. His work, imbued with impermanence and fragility, draws inspiration from his personal background as well as from current events and history. Adopting a detached approach, he reinterprets, stretches, and plays with his subject matter to offer a poetic, and sometimes biting, perspective on reality. Following his first solo exhibition in Paris in 2002, his work has been widely exhibited around the world and is now held in the collections of several institutions. Since 2018, solo exhibitions of his work have been presented at Les Rencontres d'Arles, MAC VAL, Mathaf in Doha, and the Palazzina dei Giardini in Modena. A recipient of the Abraaj Group Art Prize (2012) and the “Immersion” program from the Hermès and Aperture foundations (2017), he is represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery (Hamburg, Beirut).