CYNTHIA MONTIER

IUNO is happy to announce its collaboration with CEAAC in Strasbourg, a contemporary art centre that supports and promotes artistic creation through a program of exhibitions, commissions and residencies for national and international artists.
This year - long collaboration consists in an artists - in - residence exchange program of three months, aimed at starting or fostering a research project.

We have in residency at IUNO from 26 April, Cynthia Montier (1994), who is interested in investigating the origins and symbolic meanings associated with Italian devotional practices. Forms of rituality will also be the starting point for further investigations of both historical and current groups engaged in the struggle for women's emancipation and in forms of political protest and social justice.

Cynthia Montier's practice strongly relates with public space and with the substructure of groups, collective bodies and communities. From the fields of social anthropology and participatory inquiry she draws inspiration to develop an approach that stands at the intersection between co-creation and intervention, ritual, community and performative practices. Her work shows an attentive interest in collective memories, intentional modes of expression and symbolic appropriations that stem from a social commitment or a form of devotion, most often in favor of justice. Strongly influenced by the narratives, practices, affects and objects that emanate from her encounters, the artist appropriates popular, working-class, spiritual and militant methodologies from popular education, critical pedagogies, community and feminist knowledge, to generate and transcribe relational spaces developed by past and contemporary social movements. Her work has been presented at: Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel), The Institute of Contemporary Art in Villeurbanne, 49° North 6° East Frac Lorraine (Metz), Horizons Store (Grenoble), Printemps de Septembre (Toulouse), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Strasbourg, AQB (Budapest), Japanisches Palais (Dresden), Centre of Gravity (Bristol), Kleine Humboldt Gallery (Berlin), Richter (Moscow).

Founded in 1987 and housed in the former Neunreiter glassware and porcelain store, the Centre européeen d’actions artistiques contemporaines (CEAAC) aims to support, produce and promote contemporary creation for all audiences. Since 2001, it has also been running a far-reaching international exchange and residency programme with foreign institutions.
In September 2021, Alice Motard was named the new Director of the CEAAC. Her artistic and cultural vision aims to strengthen the European character of the CEAAC while working towards meeting the requirements to obtain certification as a Contemporary Art Centre of National Interest (C.A.C.I.N.). Her project for the future art centre pursues three lines of artistic research: a reflection on the modes of production, reproduction and circulation of images with regard to the history of Alsace as one of the birthplaces of the printing industry; an exploration of vernacular, local and popular knowledge and know-how; an investigation into issues dealing with or surrounding public healthcare.