Interview with Louise des Places

Interview by Zara Abubakar and Celia Goodman

Photography by celia goodman

Louise des Places is a 24 year old curator and arts journalist from Paris who is currently working towards a master’s degree in Cultural Engineering. She sat down with DÉPAYSANTS Online Editor, Zara Abubakar, and Online Director, Celia Goodman, to give insight on how she has begun her career in the arts and to speak about her upcoming exhibition, Et iels vécurent heureu.x.ses.

Zara: When did you first become interested in the arts?

Louise: I’ve been interested in art since I was a kid. I ran from museum to museum as soon as I was able to take the metro on my own. My mom sometimes jokes that I was the one taking her to the museums.

In high school, choosing art as my main subject gave me an excuse to skip class and hang out at the Centre Pompidou. I started writing exhibition reviews for myself, then started sending them to art blogs. Some of them got published, so I began to write more. When I was 17, I worked for several small art magazines, and I wrote an article for VICE.

After high school, I studied literature at the Sorbonne. I knew I didn’t want to go to art school because I’m not an artist myself, except for film photography and pole dancing. Otherwise, I really enjoy other people’s art and I like to write, and I love to read. I think literature is my second biggest passion.

Eventually I worked for a design magazine and went to Peru. When I came back to France, after my second year, I realized I wanted to be an arts journalist. This was around 2018, when I was already writing for a few art magazines. I was writing for Maze, RETARD, IDEAT, and a few others. I began to write for Beware Magazine, and I’ve been writing for them for years now. My boss, Erwan Manchec, is a very kind person and who really values my work. Beware organizes exhibitions a few times a year. Erwan asked me to help him, and we’ve worked on two exhibitions together. After the second exhibition, he was really happy with the selection that we assembled, so he asked me to be in charge of the exhibition department. I worked in an art gallery in Paris for a few months where I realized I didn’t want to work in the art market, but it was still interesting. After all this, I realized I wanted to be an art curator.

I then moved to Brussels, where I was supposed to be for a weekend but ended up staying a year and two months. I started off as an artist’s assistant, then I met an artist called Davide Hjort Di Fabio, and I helped him organize an exhibition in Copenhagen. Davide made the exhibition about Marie Antoinette and the Rococo period. He asked me to film the last path of Marie Antoinette, when she walked from the Conciergerie to the Place de la Concorde. Davide displayed the video in an iron theatre that he made to look like the Trianon at Versailles. That confirmed that I wanted to work close to artists, even if I don’t do art myself.

For a year and a half or so, I was helping artists, doing small exhibitions. Sometimes I had artists contacting me if they wanted help with their portfolio or their website, so I did that as well. I came back to Paris two months ago to start my master’s degree in Cultural Engineering. Currently, I’m organizing an exhibition.

Zara: Tell us about the exhibition you’re curating.

Louise: I’m currently organizing an exhibition called “Et iels vécurent heureu.x.ses”, which means “They lived happily ever after” in inclusive writing. In French, we gender words, which is a bit misogynistic because plural words are always masculine. I’m organizing this exhibition with Quentin Fromont. I met Quentin last year while we were both working for an art collective, and we really got along and realized we have the same artistic vision, so we wanted to do an exhibition together. I also like the same artists he does, and vice versa. To choose the theme of the exhibition, Quentin and I had a lot of conversations about topics that are important to us - like identity, sexuality, and relationships, so we ended up picking the theme of marriage. I think for both of us, being queer played a huge part in our artistic choices. Marriage is not something that we ultimately strive for, but it’s still the idea most people have of sacred love. We wanted to deconstruct this and present it with an open perspective, not the traditional patriarchal point of view, while keeping the celebration part of marriage. We were also really inspired by the aesthetic of a wedding - the cake, the white dress, and the kitsch that comes with it, but we’re really not focused on monogamous relationships.

We want to celebrate love in all its forms, whether it's to oneself or to others - to one person, to multiple people, to the people you love or just share intimacy with, or a community. I think it’s funny that we chose this theme because we both have different views on love. In my opinion, love is like art, it’s something I choose not to restrict or conceal. I think there is so much to give and receive from people, and we can find happiness in diversity and freedom of loving infinitely. For me, I think it should come from a place of abundance, not scarcity, and that’s the message I’m really trying to convey in this exhibition.

We invited young artists who work closely with intimacy and their identities in their art. We wanted to explore this with sensuality, humor and authenticity. We’re going to present fourteen artists, all young people who have just finished art school or are still in art school.

Zara: And the exhibition is fully-funded by you?

Louise: Yeah, the exhibition is self-funded. We created a fundraiser to help with costs - some friends have already contributed. It’s really cool that people believe in our project and are willing to help us.

Zara: How do you think your experiences working with other artists and working in an art gallery have helped you to eventually curate your own exhibition?

Louise: I’ve been working with artists for a long time, whether it's for interviews, art magazines or small exhibitions. I think I have a sensitivity to find something in people and in their art.

Zara: Do you think Paris is a place that’s welcoming to young artists?

Louise: Yes! When I came back to Paris after Brussels, I realized that this is where you have to be if you want to be an artist in Europe. I travel quite a lot, but I didn't find such a vibrant art community in Berlin or Milan, for example, compared to Paris

Celia: What do you think is the best way for people interested in an art-adjacent career to move forward?

Louise: I’m still a student myself, but you have to go for it. Don’t wait until you finish your degree to start your projects. We have plenty of time, I even took some years off during my studies. You shouldn’t chase productivity, but if you want to do an art project, don’t limit yourself. For me, art is part of my everyday life and I go to museums almost everyday. If you want to be a curator, you have to go to as many exhibitions as possible, as many vernissages as possible, and you have to talk to the artists. If you like someone’s work, tell them. They’re going to be happy, and I feel like there’s so many artists who are really talented and people don’t tell them enough. They take photos of their work for Instagram and don’t even tag them.

Celia: Do you contact a lot of people through Instagram?

Louise: Yes. There have been very few times where I’ve messaged someone and I didn’t get a response. It’s very cool because I’ve messaged artists that I thought wouldn’t answer, and they eventually did. At the moment, I’m writing an article about Lily Fei, a Chinese artist living in New York. I discovered her on Instagram and thought she was completely out of reach, but now we’re talking through email.

Celia: What’s a good museum you think other people don’t really know about?

Louise: Musée Maillol. It’s a small museum, but they always have very interesting exhibitions. A museum I dream of working in is the Palais Tokyo. Even if the Pompidou is my favorite, I see myself more in the Palais Tokyo. The Anne Imhoff exhibition was amazing, the performances by Eliza Douglas were incredible. Although it may be a bit obscure if you aren’t familiar with her previous work.

Celia: What’s your favorite museum in Paris?

Louise: Centre Pompidou. I used to know the permanent collection by heart, but they changed it last summer. I was like, “Where are the Soulages!”. I also really like Fondation Louis Vuitton, but there are so many museums that I love in Paris. We are extremely lucky to live in a city where there’s so many options. You can see everything.

Louise styled by Andrea Freydig (@andreafreydig).

“Et iels vécurent heureu.x.ses” will be available to view at Dragono Paris (3 Rue Dagorno, 75012) from November 5-6, 2021, curated by Louise des Places (@peoplearenthomes) and Quentin Fromont (@quentinfromt).