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The CPIF hosts the works of Lotfi Benyelles, Claire Chevrier, Jean Larive, Elisa Larvego, Laurent Malone, André Mérian, Gilles Raynaldy and Aimée Thirion, created as part of the eponymous photographic order from the National Center for Visual Arts and the PEROU.

Reinventing Calais joins the continuity of the action led by the PEROU association ”because it’s about refining the look we all take on Calais. Because it’s about overthrowing the evidences, and finally cultivating the story of a city-world which is nowadays crushed by an iconography of the worst. Because it’s about finally giving place to this ”invisible city” made up of the material of constructions, dreams, relationships, businesses of all kinds which actually take place. Because it’s about making public another political writing, and finally to hear the New Jungle of Calais as ‘third landscape”’ – Sébastien Thiéry, coordinator of the actions of the PEROU

With this exhibition, CPIF continues its study of forms of testimony and the articulation of documentary and fictional narrative forms.

This exhibition is the subject of a partnership between the National Center for Visual Arts, the Center Pompidou / MNAM’s Photography Center and the CPIF for a joint event on issues of representations of living conditions related to migration. With the Center Pompidou exhibition: Calais – Witness the ” jungle ”.

The CPIF, where the issue of flows has been worked since the 2000s, has chosen to address the engagement issue by highlighting the special attention that individuals and organizations (photographers, associations and public institutions) have chosen to bring to a topic of anticipated society, which concerns everyone, the one of the living conditions of migrants, more specifically on the territory of Calais. Thus, it would like to contribute to giving another visibility to the migratory question and to tell the story of the urbanity developed there.

The commitment of the center to artists both in the support to bring out their projects and in the sharing of their achievements with the public is no longer to demonstrate. By collaborating with the Cnap, the CPIF participates in the ecosystem of art. It’s a question of highlighting, of updating a public collection which contributes, through orders and purchases, to the enrichment of the French cultural heritage and which also allows artists and galleries living of their activity.