CURATING

Clelia Coussonnet’s research has been revolving around botanical politics and power structures, investigating political imprints on plants, circulation and resilience in the shows La Rose de Jéricho at Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris, France (2024); Effet de Serre, Farah Khelil (Recipient of AFAC Visual Grant 2019) in a renovated greenhouse in the Parc du Belvédère, Tunis, Tunisia (2021) accompanied by an eponymous publication; Planted in the Body, MeetFactory, Praha, Czech Republic (2021) co-curated with Tereza Jindrová; Ground Control [Markkontroll], Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden (2020) co-curated with Sofia Johansson; Leave No Stone Unturned [Remuer la terre], Le Cube — independent art room, Rabat, Morocco (2019) and Botany under Influence, apexart, NYC, USA (2016). In this field, her essay Waking Dormant Seeds was published in Theatrum Botanicum, edited by Uriel Orlow and Shela Sheikh (Sternberg Press, 2018).

As a ramification, Coussonnet has been diving into riverine and marine environments considering liquidity, toxicity and contamination, and how pollutants get superimposed. Projects include Breaking Water, Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, USA (2022) co-curated with Amara Antilla; Spoiled Waters Spilled, Les Parallèles du Sud Manifesta 13, BNM, Marseilles, France (2020) co-curated with Inga Lāce, and Au loin les signaux, al lou’lou’, dockyards of L’Anse du Pharo, Marseilles, France (2017). co-curated with Claire Astier, during the Heritage Days.

Recently, she prepared two group shows for the Institut Français de Gaza and Qattan Foundation (postponed), celebrating the 20^th anniversary of a residency program for Palestinian artists at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France.

EXCHANGING

Coussonnet has participated in the seminars Les Géorgiques : Art et inutilité at FRAC MECA, Bordeaux, France (2024); Towards Permacultural Institutions. Exercises in Collective Thinking at Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, with Köln’s CCA Temporary Gallery, Germany (2022); a collaborative research trip on environmental justice and the privatisation of public spaces in Athens (i-portunus grant, 2022) with artists Elena Azzedin, Giuliana Grippo and Corinne Silva, and lawyer Xryssa Kapartziani; in Gathering for Rehearsing Hospitalities with Frame Finland in Helsinki talking about gestural, material and corporeal knowledge (2019); in Tate Intensive: The Case for Action at the Tate Modern, London, UK (2019) and was a resident at HIAP Helsinki, Finland (2019); Click Sofia, Bulgaria (2018) and Hors Pistes Nuuk, Greenland (2017).   

In 2022, she was a resident at Villa Ndar Saint-Louis, French Institute, Senegal, with her project L’eau passe, la rive reste exploring the contamination of Senegal river, resulting in a podcast and creative writing workshops for students. The same year, she was a resident at Griffin Art Projects/ Polygon Gallery in Vancouver, BC, Canada, pursuing her research on botanical politics and waterways.

In 2024-2025, Clelia Coussonnet is part of the research project Poïpoï Folyó, a transnational endeavour between rivers of Lot (France) and Danube (in Budapest, Hungary, specifically).

WRITING

Her latest writings include texts for artists Marc Buchy and Camille Pradon; essays for Réseau DDA (upcoming 2024); the catalogue of Being as Communion, 8th Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece; the zine Towards Permacultural Institutions. Exercises in Collective Thinking, Stiftung Künstlerdorf Schöppingen, Germany; the publication Archivalia, In Ruins/Archive Books (all 2023); the publication Effet de Serre, BAO Books, Tunis (2022); the magazine Trouble dans les collections (2021); the publications Rehearsing Hospitalities – Companion 1, Frame Finland/Archive Books Berlin (2019) and Theatrum Botanicum, Sternberg Press/The Showroom London (2018).

Her editorial projects are driftongue with Clément Faydit and Alexandros Simopoulos (2017-2019) and In/Visible Voices of Women, with Missla Libsekal, an artist’s book on Safaa Erruas, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Nicène Kossentini, Amina Menia and Zineb Sedira (2015-2019).

ETHOS

As a curator, Clelia Coussonnet is interested in how visual cultures address political, social and spiritual issues in different, or complementary, ways to other disciplines. The main concern of her curatorial practice is to consider how knowledge, understood in a broad, inclusive sense, is formed and how it is transmitted, reinterpreted, updated, and used to inform alternative modes of acting and being in the world.

Fascinated with deconstructing invisible power structures that shape geopolitics and with understanding resistance strategies to domination patterns. As such, she loves to dive into interstices, gaps and other cracks, and follows artists who challenge norms and narratives around history, memory, and the production and dissemination of knowledge.

She enjoys setting up interdisciplinary projects outside of traditional art circuits and in spaces that are little or not used to host cultural projects.