During a residency in Marseille Swati Devichi developed a body of work rooted in the social and symbolic history of La Belle de Mai. The core idea was to question and recompose stereotypical female figures associated with the neighborhood by listening to the narratives and representations shared by its residents. This research led to the creation of a collage bringing together multiple imagined and remembered feminine identities, shaped by both personal memories and collective storytelling. Swati actively engaged with local associations, participating in everyday activities that allowed lasting relationships to emerge. Through these encounters, she collected intimate stories about residents’ emotional ties to local vegetation: spontaneous urban nature, garden trees providing summer shade, home-grown vegetables, or aromatic herbs evoking youthful loves. These narratives were woven into photographic portraits using a double-exposure analogue photography process, merging faces and plant forms.

Lizzie Reid has experimented with screen-printing on fabric using thermochromic ink, working with Arthur at the Ultraviolet Atelier. The idea is to explore creating textile banners that could intervene in a space or become shade structures, revealing images or statements when it gets to certain temperatures. The prints currently feature plants from Jardin des Rails – which remained closed to the artists – imagining ways of bringing this nature into the more concrete areas of La Friche. Alongside this, she produced printed works that make visible the hidden dynamics of heat – typographic posters highlighting the tension of La Friche as a space both too hot to work and too hot to play, and diagrammatic mark-making visualising how skin, leaves, and concrete absorb and release heat, inspired by street markings in Marseille. Lastly, she also produced a small zine called Keeping our Cities Porous in Rising Heat, bringing together her research from the last month on how themes of opening and closing shape responses to extreme heat in urban spaces.  

Together, the artists ran an informal creative activity at the local playground, inviting children to look around for their favourite plants and draw them in a collective garden on a large scroll of paper. They will continue to develop this at the open studio, inviting visitors to contribute further.

The residency concluded with a public Open Studio, where the artists shared their work-in-progress with local audiences and professionals of art.

Find out more about the residency HERE.