Art is never
the object alone.
Anne-Laure Lemaitre shapes places
where makers and viewers belong.
Our world is shifting. What has felt certain in our lifetime may now feel unstable. What were rooted principles, understanding of greater mechanisms, immovable certitudes has adjusted towards the undefined, the permeable, the precarious. These changes impact us all differently and disproportionately depending on wealth, geography, and access. Borders tighten and loosen unpredictably. Communities are uprooted by climate, conflict, economics. The ground beneath our feet is less solid than we were taught to believe.
When asked to participate in THIRD BORN’s first curatorial residency, I thought of what residing in Mexico City for a month meant, for me, and as a whole, especially after a year of constant uprooting. I thought of the extreme changes CDMX has undergone in the past decade, in part due to digital nomadism and relocation, too often dissociated from engagement and communal involvement into the fabric of a pre-existing societal system deserving of respect. I thought about what it means to arrive somewhere with intention, to bring something of value while remaining attuned to what already exists, to contribute rather than extract.
Residencies by definition are not static, and I couldn't see myself simply 'bringing a show' conceived for a city from a distance. Instead, I wanted to think about what it means to dwell somewhere temporarily, to be present without claiming permanence, to carry context and memory as baggage; not burden, but contribution.
One never leaves oneself behind when relocated—by choice or force—they carry with them memories, beliefs, rituals, moments which sum into a life. This baggage is a contribution. It should bring value while integrating what is, create dialogue, open up space for something new to emerge, while remaining in consideration of its surroundings and responsive to its environment.
En Flujo (In Flux) is designed as a porous, living experience in which works evolve, move, and change throughout the duration of the exhibition. At the start of the residency, it will feature the work of five artists, each prompted to think of impermanence as a premise. They each have in common a rigorous conceptual grounding and an interest in art as a dialogue with space, time, environment, and the living systems that surround us. They work and live in Mexico City, but also Manila, and New York City, other places I spent significant time in the past year, and cities themselves shaped by waves of migration, displacement, gentrification, and resilience.
Throughout the residency, the works will evolve from their own volition. The exhibition may change. Artists may be added. The intention is not to fix meaning or freeze the show in place, but to let it breathe, shift, respond. Art has this tendency to create static artifacts that are preserved, protected, insularized, transacted. The concept of the finite object, with a definitive end state, condition reports, valuations, insurance, status as asset class feels at such odds with our current context, where so much is uncertain, where so many of us live in states of flux ourselves. In a moment defined by displacement, instability, and the unraveling of old orders, why should art remain rigid?
Art can live. It can evolve, change, exist away from these fixed, antiquated paradigms. Art can be play. Art can feed. Art can shift our perceptions to create a sense of wonder anchored in moments, not legacy alone. Living with art does not have to mean acquiring something precious and unchanging to preserve for future generations. It can mean welcoming something alive into our space, something that grows with us, responds to us, asks something of us in return.
En Flujo (In Flux) is an invitation to reconsider what it means to reside. In a place, with art, in uncertainty. It asks what we carry with us when we move, and what we're willing to let go. It proposes that impermanence is not a lack, but a condition rich with possibility. And it suggests that in times of profound change, the most honest thing art can do is change too.
Photo: Alexander Laurent Rubalcava
Anne-Laure Lemaitre is a curator, writer, and producer based in New York, Paris, and the Nova Scotia wilderness. Her practice begins by questioning a territory: its physical and emotional dimensions, its history, its context, its belonging, before turning to the art it calls for. This orientation has shaped a body of work spanning the most experimental corners of the emerging art world and leading corporations and public institutions.
Many artists she has worked with early in their careers have since gone on to significant critical and market recognition. Those relationships rarely end with the exhibition. For several, she remains a resource: someone to think with, exchange with, workshop with.
For nearly twenty years, she has worked across scales and contexts: from intimate solo exhibitions at artist-run spaces to permanent public commissions, from single-artist career conversations to cultural programs spanning five continents. Her practice is built around the specific rather than the repeatable, treating the space, the institution, the sidewalk, and the online environment each as curatorial material in its own right.
Lemaitre writes regularly about art for catalogues, publications, and for herself. Her writing, whether commissioned or not, tends toward the felt rather than the prescribed: a belief that how we speak about a practice, and what it does to us, shapes how it is seen and received.
Intentional art programs · Site-specific commissions
Curatorial strategy · International practice
Art In Context is a curatorial production practice whose work ranges from international public commissions, corporate collections and multi-venue cultural strategies to ongoing collaborations with artists, brands and cultural institutions.
Every project begins with the same questions: what does this place need, what story belongs here, and who should tell it. That orientation shapes everything from artist selection and fabrication to the logic of how a program holds together in one location or across multiple sites.
Drawing on nearly twenty years of work, Art In Context has built the infrastructure to operate anywhere and at any scale. An extensive network of creative partners allows it to move from a single commission to a coordinated program spanning dozens of sites without losing the specificity that makes a project land. Art In Context works worldwide.