We are excited to announce the third residency of the MATCH project, taking place from 26 January to 26 February 2026 at Friche la Belle de Mai – Jardins des Rails
in Marseille, France. The residency will conclude with a public exposition in June 2026, presenting the artists’ research and creative outcomes.

The residency will be hosted at « The Jardins des rails » a community garden located at the Friche la Belle de Mai. This garden is shared between inhabitants of la Belle de Mai neighborhodd.

This part of La Friche is divided into plots for experimenting with vegetable and ornamental crops, as well as all forms of urban gardening. You will also find a dry garden, containers dedicated to educational gardening, various planting pits, and a rock garden.

Whether they are local residents, students from the Gilles Vigneault school or the Belle de Mai middle school, members of the La Ruche Verte association, or students from the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage, all these gardeners work this space to make this former industrial site more fertile.

Produced by La Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille, France) 

La Friche, in its prototypal form, arose in 1992 out of the new models for urban cultural interaction in the public interest, now known as “third places.” This unique, reinvented space brings together artistic activity, modes of urban transformation, real connections to the region, and dynamic cooperation.

La Friche is both a workspace for 70 resident organizations (400 artists, producers, and employees work here every day), and a cross-disciplinary venue (each year, over 600 artistic events are made available to the public). Every year, 450,000 visitors come to this 45,000 square-meter public space housing five performance spaces, a community garden, a playground and athletic space, a restaurant, bookstore, daycare, some 2,400 square meters of exhibition space, an 8,000 square-meter rooftop, and a training center.

This residency welcomes Lizzie Reid and Swati Devichi, two artists whose practices intertwine art, ecology, and social inquiry.

Lizzie Reid explores how creativity can connect people with social and climate justice. With her work she seeks to rally people around causes, tell stories with care, and make complex ideas easier to understand – through campaigns, films, digital projects, installations, and more. From a digital archive of visual solidarity, to a pop-up installation encouraging neighbourly interaction, to a photo essay about a community garden, Lizzie works collaboratively to engage communities. Her approach blends creativity, activism, and academia – with extensive experience in the creative industry, years of grassroots activism and a recent MA focused on Political Ecology, Degrowth, and Environmental Justice at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Lizzie has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Barcelona, where she is now based.

Swati Devichi is trained in social sciences at École normale supérieure in Paris. Her recent artistic projects combine ethnographic writing and analog clichés. Swati began photographing more intentionally, then professionally, at the end of 2023, and explores themes such as everyday politics, urban commons, and emotional attachment to territories. Swati works on commission in Portugal and France, and her photographs have been exhibited in Rome, Budapest, Paris, Lisbon, and New York.

For the residency in La Friche Lizzie Reid aims to create a collaborative artwork based on the knowledge gathered during the residency, ideally resulting in a piece that can live on in the green space in some form. Swati Devichi aims to foster shared authorship, regenerative imagination, and a deeper sense of care for everyday urban spaces. The Jardin des Railsoffers fertile ground for using photography as a tool for archiving, justice, and hopeful transformation.