It Takes a Village: Valentine Gardiennet Turns Magasins Généraux into an Imaginary Village
From March 22 to May 18, 2025, Magasins Généraux invites artist Valentine Gardiennet to take over the entire venue - along with its programming -for an exhibition-residency titled “It Takes a Village.” A free, open-admission experience that unfolds a world that is at once cartoonish, carnivalesque, and deeply collective.
A Large-Scale World Between Childhood, Pop Culture, and Folk Craft
Valentine Gardiennet creates large-scale installations fueled by pop culture, childhood, and adolescence. Her work blends techniques drawn from DIY hobbies and the craft traditions of popular festivities—drawing, ceramics, papier-mâché, plaster, and reused materials—to invent a vibrant, humorous, sometimes unsettling universe where exaggeration and satire become tools of subversion.
A “Village” to Explore: Giant Dolls, a Monumental Bed, and a Cardboard Theater Troupe
For this exhibition-residency, the artist transforms Magasins Généraux into an imaginary village: giant dolls, a house covered in drawings, a papier-mâché theater troupe, a windmill, ghosts—all orbiting around a huge bed at the center of the space. Visitors move through this set like a life-size bedroom, a film set under construction, a treasure hunt, or the studio of an artist who decided to live inside her own fiction.
In the background, a guiding idea: that it takes a whole village to grow up, to create, to love, to endure—and even to put on an exhibition. Gardiennet’s universe is an ode to collective creation and to the figures (real or fictional) who surround us and help us stand.
A Living Exhibition: Tours, Family Workshops, Late Nights, and Cultural Events
Conceived as an experience in motion, “It Takes a Village” comes with a multidisciplinary program, including:
- Guided tours: every Saturday and Sunday at 2:30pm (free with reservation)
- Family workshops: Pocket Companions (ages 6+): Saturday at 3pm and My Journey Through Emotions (ages 3+): Sunday at 3pm
- Several highlights: an opening night, the late-night event Under the Sheets, film club, Night at Magasins, 1 km of dance, and more.
Practical Information
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It Takes a Village — Valentine Gardiennet (exhibition-residency)
📍 Magasins Généraux (Pantin)
📅 March 22 — May 18, 2025
🎟️ Free admission**
