Frac Sud - Cité de l'art contemporain

“Faire Société”

Over the past 40 years, the Frac have contributed to raising awareness of contemporary art among generations of visitors, thanks to their assiduous work with schoolchildren and social workers in particular. It has to be said, however, that there is still much to be done to raise awareness of the Frac’s missions and activities among what we call “remote” audiences, which are not always those belonging to the most modest and underprivileged sections of the population: people can be remote from art for many other reasons, including cultural ones. The Frac must therefore continue to innovate and be ever more inventive when it comes to reaching out to other audiences. As part of a dynamic of cultural transversality, Frac Sud – Cité de l’Art Contemporain, through its “Faire société” project, aims to raise awareness of sport and amateur sporting practices. With the Olympic Games and the Cultural Olympiad in mind, Frac has made the relationship between art and sport a key focus of its artistic programming and its policy of enriching its collection. For example, in 2023 and 2024, Frac Sud will be building new artistic residency projects in training centers and sports clubs across its territory, to encourage a genuine encounter between the fields of art and sport and enable their audiences to cross-fertilize. In 2024, together with other cultural players in the region, it will be staging a major themed exhibition entitled “Olympics”, a generous and lively show that will give the public a delightful insight into what art brings to sport and sport to art. Sport is just as much a part of building a common culture as art.

Muriel Enjalran holds a master’s degree in history for her thesis entitled ‘Marseille, Commerce et échanges dans l’art du XVIIIe’ (Marseille, Trade and Exchange in 18th-centruy Art) and a post-graduate diploma in contemporary art under the supervision of Serge Lemoine. She has worked as an independent art critic and exhibition curator, most notably as associate curator for the first edition of the Biennale de Belleville and the Marrakech Biennale. Her research explores the involvement of artists in the public arena, with a particular focus on art activism in the field of history and the potential of visual sociology.

She was general secretary and project coordinator of d.c.a., the French association for the Development of Art Centres, between 2006 and 2015. Since 2015, Muriel Enjalran has been director of the CRP / Centre Régional de la Photographie Hauts-de-France in Douchy-les-Mines, one of the first art centres in France to receive the label ‘Contemporary Art Centre of National Interest’ under the aegis of the French Ministry of Culture. Since 2012, she has collaborated with Independent Curators International in New York, and is also a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and of the acquisitions and commissioning committee of the Cnap (National Centre for Visual Arts). In 2015 she was awarded a curatorial residency at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago. In 2020 she joined the expert committee for the organisation of the cultural programme for the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics.