Frac Poitou-Charentes

The Frac Poitou-Charentes is one of three regional contemporary art funds in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Its vocation is to build up a collection of contemporary art and to disseminate it through its regional offices in Angoulême and Linazay, and the local partnerships it forges with cultural, social and educational players and local authorities.

Exhibitions, creative residencies, production, distribution, conservation, documentation of artworks, artistic and cultural education initiatives, the Frac Poitou-Charentes works alongside artists in all aspects of their activity. Its distribution operations are accompanied by mediation initiatives to facilitate and deepen access to contemporary artworks and creative approaches. Its collection currently numbers over a thousand works. Enriched each year by new acquisitions, it is international and representative of the most recent developments in contemporary art.

In 2024, the structure enters a transition phase with the arrival of Irene Aristizábal as its new director. The guiding principles of her project for the Frac Poitou-Charentes, entitled Autopoiesis and Radical Interdependence, reflect a desire to initiate an ecological and social transition, to reintegrate the institution into its territorial context by placing artists at the heart of all activities, and to pay particular attention to rural contexts. In dialogue with the local fabric, the project opens the way to more collaborations and co-creations, reaffirms its commitment to the artistic scene, and also carries an ambition for national and international influence.

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The Frac Poitou-Charentes’s acquisition policy aims to continue building a collection that is an international benchmark, representative of the most recent developments in contemporary art, forward-looking – attentive to young national and international creation, and that reflects and supports the art scene in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region. Our acquisition policy reflects the history of the collection, and aims to enrich existing thematic lines while developing new directions for new acquisitions, with particular attention to gender parity and opening up the collection to cultural diversity.

Our acquisition policy is articulated in dialogue with the collections of Frac Nouvelle-Aquitaine Méca and Frac-Artothèque Nouvelle Aquitaine, to develop coherent, complementary and collaborative acquisition strategies.

The new guidelines for new acquisitions are as follows, while taking into account issues of parity, cultural diversity and a particular focus on a reality of ecological transition

-︎ A look at rurality, around the question of territory and our relationship to living things.

-︎ Socially committed practices.

-︎ The digital image, with a particular focus on innovative practices in video, animation and 3D creation.

-︎ Develop acquisitions of artists from contexts less represented in the collection (Indigenous artists and artists from outside Europe/North America).

︎- One commission-acquisition per year, as part of the Frac’s programming.