The Cité internationale des arts, the world’s largest artist residency, welcomes over 1,000 artists each year, bringing together artists of all backgrounds and generations in the heart of Paris and giving them the opportunity to pursue a creative or research project across all disciplines.
To Make Space for the World explores how contemporary artists engage with cultural internationalism through themes of exchange, solidarity, borders, mobility, and displacement. Bringing together 16 artists from 15 countries who have been residents at the Cité internationale des arts, the exhibition presents internationalism as a complex and uneven experience shaped by negotiation, translation, hospitality, opportunity, dependence, and forced displacement. It examines how artists experience and respond to borders and international mobility. The artists imagine alternative forms of community and belonging, while their works also explore art as a temporary refuge from grief and trauma, a means of healing, and a way of bringing hidden histories back into view.
Rather than presenting internationalism as a fixed or inherently positive value, the exhibition highlights its contradictions and inequalities. While crossing borders can offer opportunities for connection and artistic exchange, it can also involve displacement, dependence, and unequal access to mobility.
