Julie Portier Talk

Saturday 4 October 2025 2.30pm

Talk starts at 3pm

Julie Portier (1982, France) is an art critic, curator and teacher based in Lyon, where she has been running La Salle de Bains since 2016. As part of her AICA France residency at FTHo, Portier will give a talk discussing her work with La Salle de Bains, a non profit art space based in Lyon.

Free, no booking required.

 (Julie Portier Talk 0)

Over the years she has cooked up more than seventy exhibitions, books and performances, turning the space into a playground for rethinking what an exhibition can be, how artists and audiences meet, and how a small independent venue can still claim freedom of expression in a cultural field under pressure.

She has taught contemporary art history and theory at ESAAA (Annecy) and co-founded the Monstre MFA, a program designed to face the realities of today’s art world head-on—its economies, its ethics, and its possible alternatives. 

Writing is her way of making sense of it all: she has published hundreds of texts on artists of her generation, blending analysis with a taste for the literary and the humorous. Her interests drift toward practices that engage critically with the conditions of capitalism, and lately she has been looking at the power of the opaque, the understated, the not-so-explicit and the idea of “freedom” in arts, as this notion has been hijacked by conservative liberal rhetoric. She also contributes as an expert in the field of art and cultural policies, including as a member of the advisory board of the Fonds cantonal d’art contemporain in Geneva.

For her residency at Flat Time House she plans to press pause, flatten the clock, and dedicate her time to wandering the city, meeting artists, tuning into the local scene, and thinking through the structures that shape independent art spaces.

 (Julie Portier Talk 1)

La Salle de bains is a non-profit organisation founded by Gwenaël Morin, Lionel Mazelaygue, and Olivier Vadrot in 1998 in Lyon.

La Salle de bains' activities are based on the production of works, exhibitions, and publications by contemporary national and international artists of different generations, as well as events cross-cuttingly linked to the venue's annual program.

La Salle de bains ensures access to and support for this program for various types of audiences from its area of ​​operation.

It works on network development and project design. The space is proposed as a place of convergence and redeployment of an activity extended outside the framework of the exhibition.

www.lasalledebains.net

 (Julie Portier Talk 2)