Co-director of les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (Paris northern suburbs) since 2013 with Dora Garcia and Mathilde Villeneuve, Alexandra Baudelot has worked for several years as an exhibition curator, editor and author. In 2009 she created and managed Rosascape, a platform for contemporary creation in Paris that straddles multiple spheres as a private art centre and production unit, exploring the contexts of production and reception of works as well as their mode of display by attending to specific notions such as the question of private, intimate space vs public and political space. The decision to house Rosascape in an architecturally defined space — a private, intimate, theatrical space, playing with a tension between interior and exterior space and the domestic character of its surroundings — rather than in a neutral, ‘white cube’ type of exhibition space, stems from a will to perceptibly shift the relationship to artworks and artistic experiences. A critical awareness of the standardisation of exhibition spaces in the context of globalisation, and thus of the standardised relationship between the artwork and the public, led us to seek and occupy a site and experiential sphere of a different kind — a left-field space — and displace, in this way, our relationship to contemporary art. At Rosascape she curated exhibitions with Katinka Bock, Ulla von Brandenburg, Raymond Gervais, Benoît Maire, Vittorio Santoro, Berger&Berger, and Adrian Dan and produced several artists books. + Since 2013, as co-director of Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, she develops a work with Mathilde Villeneuve and Dora Garcia based on two factors — a laboratory that research, test out and experiment, and the town of Aubervilliers (at the periphery, on the outskirts, a melting pot of industrial workers, and a major site of immigration). The very particular relationship between these elements is the context in which artists-in-residence make and develop their projects. The collegial approach aims to establish collectives that enable new forms of intersubjectivity to take shape. In collaboration with the co-direction team, she works on developing novel communities that alter and transform according to the shifts and developments in their work. From the very beginning, the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers has been committed to reducing the gap between informed and uninformed audiences, and to supporting the most complex and hybrid artistic practices while ensuring no one feels excluded. The institution is renowned for the collective productions it has generated, for fostering collaborations between artists across the entire spectrum of disciplines, and for its participatory, community-building projects involving local residents. In 2016 she co-curated the event « Performing Opposition » intiated by Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers at Capacete (Rio de Janeiro) and Casa do Povo (Sao Paulo). She is the author of the book “Dispositif chorégraphique” (Les Presses du Réel, Nouvelles scènes collection, 2005) on the work of choreographer Jennifer Lacey in collaboration with the scenographer Nadia Lauro, the editor of the monograph “Grimaces du réél” on the choreographer Latifa Laâbissi (Les Presses du Réel, Nouvelles scènes collection, 2015), “Portraits d’Aubervilliers” by Lenio Kaklea with Lou Forster (Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers, 2018), “Zarba Lonsa _o_o__o Mesonya/ » an editorial project by Katinka Bock, (MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2018) In 2016 she curated a serie of three exhibitions with Ulla von Brandenburg at The Power Plant (Toronto), The Darling Foundry (Montreal) and ACCA (Melbourne). -
