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Pauline Brocart & Federico Nicolao

Resident
15.10.2022 - 15.11.2022

Medici Residency

Literature

Biography

Pauline Brocart is a freelance graphic designer. Born in Paris in 1994, she graduated from ECAL Lausanne in 2018. As much an artist as a designer, she gives a privileged place to collaboration in her work. She works in art, fashion and design. She has also contributed to the design of numerous publications and projects in contemporary artistic creation. In 2021, as part of Piccole Baie Books’ “pensare per immagini” collection, she published her first book of photographs, entitled Chora. Today, she continues to explore territories in the making. Federico Nicolao is a writer and philosopher. He is founder and director of the magazine Chorus, Una Costellazione and the Centro Studi Piccole Baie. A former resident of the Académie de France in Rome, he was program director of the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris and the Musée Picasso in Antibes. With Cécile Debray, he founded and directed the artist residency festival ¡ Viva Villa!. He teaches contemporary art theory and practice at the ECAL in Lausanne and image theory at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paris Cergy.

Project

Piccole Baie books is a publishing project conceived by Pauline Brocart and Federico Nicolao. Their approach to publishing is deliberately atypical and experimental. It takes its cue from writers and artists who are protagonists of a dissemination of texts on a micro-drawing and micro-scale (Lourdes Castro, Michel Butor, Franco Toselli, Emmanuel Hocquard – with whom they have been in contact – have never ceased to fascinate them). Pauline Brocart and Federico Nicolao work on their publishing project in several countries and languages, each time giving themselves the freedom to choose the subject of their research, to produce in turn small editions, with irregular and undisciplined publication and distribution. The originality of their approach has led them to collaborate over the last few years with numerous writers and artists (Micol Assael, Laurent Berger, Anne Bertrand, Zoé Cornelius, Suzanne Doppelt, Elein Fleiss, Yannick Haënel, Raphaël Lain and Angela Detanico, Pierre Leguillon, Jochen Lempert, Francesca Torzo, to name but a few), pushing back with them the limits traditionally assigned to publishing by the industry. The question of the time needed to gestation a project – be it a book, a magazine, a poster or any other form of publication – is one of their main concerns, if not the only one. This is why they have chosen to work with a particular focus on artists’ residencies (as with the Paysage Ouvert project at the ateliers des Arques in the Lot region), to the point of deciding in turn to instigate two very special artists’ residencies: one that gives the name to their publishing project, the “Piccole baie”, in a house on the Ligurian coast in Italy, in the heart of a nature reserve, the other, “Meeuw”, in Burgundy, on board a boat that can remain docked or sail along the French canals to the sea.

After residency

Production grant

publication

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All our tears

in co-production with Éditions Cambourakis

2026

Based on the death of a mother crushed by anti-feminism and dissolved in the water of a river, a text found in the deceased’s personal belongings and the emergence of memories of what was experienced as a child, this book aims to reflect on the socio-historical condition of women and gender minorities who suffer violence and live with the dead. With overwhelming intensity, Clovis Maillet Monory’s family and historical investigation brilliantly interweaves our intimate and collective mourning.

This book is co-produced by the production grant Éditions Cambourakis x La Villa Médicis.

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Production grant

exhibition

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By mistake and at random

in co-production with Maison Salvan

11.03 - 02.05.2026

Nicolas Daubanes compares two creative sites of very different scales: the Villa Medici, a prestigious Roman residence, and the Maison Salvan, a modest village house that has become an artistic home. He thus engages in a conversation with works and historical figures such as Galileo, Ingres, Velázquez and Courbet. While some of his earlier works are also on display, the exhibition mainly features recent works from his ongoing research.

This exhibition is co-produced as part of the Maison Salvan x Villa Medici production grant.

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Prince of Monaco – Villa Medici Artistic Grant

The Inner Fire

2026

Fellow at the Villa Medici in 2024–2025, Nicolas Daubanes is the recipient of the first Prince of Monaco – Villa Medici Artistic Grant for the year 2025. In this context, he is developing the project Le feu intérieur (‘The Inner Fire’) inspired by the architecture and collections of the Villa. Nicolas Daubanes revisits the works of artists associated with the Villa, including François-Marius Granet, Camille Corot, Diego Velázquez and the engravings of Piranèse, using the photogram technique. He creates images in which light becomes matter, thanks to the photosensitive revelation of projected steel sparks.

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Production grant

publication

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The great method

in co-production with La fabrique éditions

2026

An Algerian immigrant family sets off to bury their father back home. During this journey, disturbed by apparitions, something begins to unravel: the secrets of the people that exile fails to make them forget.
La grande méthode is the latest book by Louisa Yousfi, fellow in 2024-2025, and explores the delicate seam between the visible world and the invisible worlds that persist in the shadows and still inhabit “Western” minds.

This book was co-produced under the La fabrique éditions x Villa Medici production grant.

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Production grant

symposium

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Preserving human remains

22.01 - 23.01.2026 - Paris

Former fellow Laure Cadot (2023-2024) is organizing and taking part in the international symposium “Preserving human remains” at the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac. These meetings on new approaches to conservation and the care of human remains in institutions aim to highlight and discuss professional practices in the light of contemporary issues surrounding this unique heritage.

This symposium is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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Production grant

exhibition

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Une pierre sous la langue

in co-production with Frac Franche-Comté

17.10.2025 - 01.03.2026 - Besançon

The exhibition Une pierre sous la langue (A Stone Under the Tongue) refers to a Saharan poem that recommends putting a stone under the tongue to forget, and throwing it towards the sun to remember… It brings together works created between 2021 and 2024, including two pieces from the Frac collection, as well as previously unseen works created especially for the occasion, notably during the artist’s stay at Villa Medici as a resident.

This exhibition is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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Production grant

exhibition

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Resources: Act #2

Bienal de São Paulo

in co-production with Bienal de São Paulo

06.09.2025 - 11.01.2026 - São Paulo

Conceived in the form of a pontoon, Les Ressources : Acte #2 (2025) is a monumental installation acting as a ship carrying found objects such as fragments of wood, ropes and jerrycans, reminiscent of all the boats that sail the open sea and, by extension, fishing activities.

This installation is co-produced as part of the Louis Roederer Foundation grant.

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!Viva Villa! project

exhibition

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Yvonne Rainer: A Reader

in co-production with Crac Occitanie

11.10.2025 - 15.02.2026 - Sète

The exhibition takes its title from the English term ” reader “, which refers both to a publication containing a collection of texts by an author, and to the very position of reader. This unprecedented format is extended to the context of a transdisciplinary exhibition: although it has the appearance of a monograph, this exhibition brings together a multiplicity of artists, performers and researchers, whose voices resonate around Yvonne Rainer.

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Palladium palms

!Viva Villa! project

exhibition

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Sensitive machine

in co-production with Cité des Arts de la Réunion

03.10.2025 - 31.01.2026 - Saint-Denis, Reunion Island

“Machine sensible” is an exhibition of digital, technological, trans- and multi-media works by Mounir Ayache, Diane Cescutti, Abel Techer and Raphaëlle Von Knebel, whose creations are born of a renewed attention to and mastery of textile creation, design, painting and sculpture. Each artist, through his or her visual and plastic language, questions the evolution of our condition as being-in-the-world and our coexistence on real and/or virtual territories by setting up narratives whose fictional imaginations invite us to better embrace our shared futures.

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Production grant

Tempesta

in co-production with Un Éte au Havre, Chevaldeuxtrois

01.06 - 31.08.2025 - Le Havre

Set in little-known parts of Le Havre, Tempesta echoes the myth of Prometheus and the history of the city’s destruction. In a tableau that brings together the present and the ancient, Mali Arun summons young dancers into a world of light and shadow. Chevaldeuxtrois and Un Été Au Havre present, in coproduction with the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, a film by Mali Arun produced by Jérémy Forni.

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