Founded at 9 French Place, Shoreditch, London — FRENCH PLACE enters its next chapter in Milan, where our programme extends across exhibitions, an artist residency, and research–driven initiatives that support deep engagement with contemporary practice.
Founded at 9 French Place, Shoreditch, London — FRENCH PLACE enters its next chapter in Milan, where our programme extends across exhibitions, an artist residency, and research–driven initiatives that support deep engagement with contemporary practice.
EXHIBITION,
CORALE 29.01.26—28.02.26
Xolo Cuintle, Nina Davies, Anna De Castro Barbosa, Francesca Frigerio, Steph Huang, Cecilia Mentasti, Mountaincutters, Matthias Odin, Marco Siciliano, Riley Tu, Gaspar Willmann, Rafał Zajko, Luis Enrique Zela- Koort.
In Italian, corale carries a meaning that extends beyond music. In addition to referring to choral composition, it denotes something collective, shared, unanimous. This semantic nuance does not translate into English: choral remains bound to singing, while chorale evokes a specific musical tradition, the Lutheran one, exemplified by Bach’s chorales. The show emerges precisely within this linguistic gap, adopting it as a productive space in which plurality, friction, and resonance can coexist without collapsing into unity.
The exhibition draws inspiration from When I Sing, the Mountains Dance by Irene Solà, a novel structured as a constellation of voices—human and non-human, living and spectral—woven into a fragmented yet cohesive narrative. In musical terms, it recalls the idea that what begins as cacophony may gradually form a fragile harmony: a metaphor for systems of meaning that find coherence not through homogeneity, but through dissonance and proximity. This approach resonates with Édouard Glissant’s concept of Relation and his échos-mondes: worlds that vibrate through multiplicity, where identity is articulated through relation rather than transparency. The author’s right to opacity—the claim that identities and subjectivities do not need to be entirely legible in order to enter into relation—becomes a central curatorial approach preserving difference without demanding translation. Opacity protects difference, allowing it to resonate without being dissolved into sameness. In this sense, corale resonates with Aruna D’Souza’s notion of imperfect solidarities. To embrace imperfection in solidarity is to accept opacity: to hold space for differences that cannot and should not be fully reconciled, yet can still act together. The exhibition pushes this position further, echoing Françoise Vergès’s insistence that any collective must reckon with asymmetries, fractures, and the sedimentation of historical violence. It is through these fractures that more radical configurations of collectivity may emerge.
The artists brought together in Corale operate within a polyphonic condition. Their practices engage with urgent questions of the present while resisting aesthetic or ideological homogeneity. What connects them is not a shared language or medium, but a shared critical resonance. Corale thus functions as a listening device—a curatorial architecture attentive to opacity, multiplicity, and vibration. Conceived through a commitment to simultaneity rather than progression, the exhibition unfolds as a shared field where voices coexist without hierarchy or resolution. Difference is not smoothed over but held in tension, allowing fragmentation, rhythm, and relational forms of making to generate a fragile yet productive equilibrium. The title Corale reflects the ethos of FRENCH PLACE itself, conceived as a space where artistic practices, collaborations, and public programmes converge into a constellation of voices. FRENCH PLACE builds its identity on the principle of multiplicity: exhibitions unfold alongside residencies, workshops, talks, screenings, and performances, generating a collective rhythm that extends beyond the exhibition walls.