L'Envers du décor 2025: the night-time contemporary art festival at the Palais de la Porte Dorée

Published by Cécile de Sortiraparis · Photos by My de Sortiraparis · Published on January 14, 2025 at 12:52 p.m.
L'Envers du décor, at the Palais de la Porte Dorée, is back for its 8th edition. On February 7 and 8, 2025, a host of artists will be on hand to present free, original and contemporary installations and activities. Are you ready? Watch out, it's going to shine!

The new edition of L'Envers du décor is unveiled at the Palais de la Porte Dorée! This free contemporary art festival offers Parisians a weekend of free entertainment on February 7 and 8, 2025. For the eighth consecutive year, the L'Envers du décor festival offers a festive program, showcasing the greatest talents incontemporary art. Installations, concerts, performances, shows... This year's guest artists have pulled out all the stops, much to our delight!

During the second weekend of February, the Palais and its various spaces come alive for two artistic evenings. Concerts, installations, dance, storytelling... A host of surprises await us! And don't forget that the currenttemporary exhibition is open to the public from 7pm during the festival.

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Don't hesitate: for this special occasion, all the festival's facilities are accessible free of charge, but only on reservation. Please note that the Aquarium is not free.

Can't wait? We know what you mean, and so do we! Here are the highlights of this night edition of L'Envers du décor 2025:

Performance

  • Adama et Yves
    Jo Güstin
    Friday and Saturday at 7.15pm and 9.15pm | Forum
    Running time: 15 minutes
    Writer, poet and actress Jo Güstin celebrates black and queer culture through fiction, storytelling and humor. Dressed in her "color monster" costume, the artist draws the audience into the story of Adama and Yves. This story comes from her series Contes et légendes du Queeriqoo, a world where multiculturalism and plurality of accents are, for once, valued.

  • Songs of grief (Love me tender)
    Vanasay Khamphommala
    Friday and Saturday at 7.30pm, 8.45pm and 10.15pm | Salon des laques
    Running time: 25 minutes
    What will we sing when our loved ones pass away? In SONGS OF GRIEF (LOVE ME TENDER), Vanasay Khamphommala rehearses the Elvis Presley song her Laotian-born father asked her to sing when he died - a death yet to come. This delicate, ritual-like performance is an opportunity for the artist to reflect on the question of transmission.

  • Raayam Fa Roog and Les ombres sont les nôtres
    T.I.E
    Friday at 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm - Saturday at 7:30 pm
    Auditorium and appearances in the Salon des laques Running time: 20 minutes
    Senegalese artist T.I.E advocates experimentation and the decompartmentalization of forms of expression. In the auditorium, in dialogue with the work of Raphaël Barontini, she presents a ritual-performance, with which she intends to appease spirits and honor the memory of the victims of the transatlantic slave trade, while banishing man's predatory nature.
    She also takes over the salon des laques for appearances based on her poem Les Ombres sont Nôtres. In the face of these highly refined works, she questions notions of beauty and exoticism in the light of their colonial context.

  • GR1312 - All colonisaters are bastards
    Saphir Belkheir
    Friday and Saturday at 7:45pm and 9pm | Hall d'honneur
    Duration: 15 minutes
    Starting from the bas-relief on the façade of the Palais de la Porte Dorée, Saphir Belkheir invites the public to take part in a choreographic and collaborative journey. The performance focuses on the notion of displacement and its representations. The artist's body is both traversed and traversing in a history of deficient representations.

  • Loro-Loroning Atunggal, unifier ce qui est double
    Amalia Laurent in collaboration with the Pantcha Indra company
    Friday at 8pm - Saturday at 8pm and 9:30pm | Forum
    Duration: 20 minutes
    For the exhibition Chaque vie est une histoire, Amalia Laurent unfurls an immense dyed veil in the Forum, inspired by the colors and faces of the frescoes and playing on the effects of transparency. For l'Envers du décor, she joins forces with the Pantcha Indra company for a concert of ritual-like Indonesian music around her work.
    Six musicians form an instrumental ensemble called gamelan, playing gongs, metallophones and percussion in unison. Behind the artist's veil, dancers move to the rhythm of this bewitching music, like a ghostly presence.

  • 4 (a) ch/cords
    Daniel Nicolaevsky & Adeola
    Friday and Saturday at 8.30pm and 10pm | Forum
    Duration: 20 minutes
    The performance 4 (a) ch/cords explores the notion of attachment, that ambivalent force that binds us to loved ones, to familiar places, to the earth and to our history. Performer Daniel Nicolaevsky wraps and unwraps himself around taut ropes, playing with the monumentality of the Forum. The deep vocals of Nigerian artist Adeola, a blend of English and Yoruba, accompany this levitating body, cradling it and gradually releasing it from its imprisonment.

  • Azeze Ame Adre, l'étincelle finale
    Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia
    Saturday at 8pm | Temporary exhibition | Hall Marie Curie
    Duration: 2 hours
    For Chaque vie est une histoire, Togolese sculptor Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia has modeled seven columns of ceramic vases, each one representing a different day of the week. Inside each vase, the artist placed kpatima leaves, a West African plant with multiple mystical and therapeutic qualities, diffusing their purifying virtues through the clay.
    Throughout the exhibition, visitors were invited to leave words, wishes and messages. Regularly burned, these writings created an ink used by subsequent visitors to write their messages. During the evening of the festival, Kokou Ferdinand Makouvia performs a final closing ceremony, an ode to the memories that echo through the walls of the Palais.

  • Love is in the hair/Partition
    Carte blanche à la compagnie For Happy People & Co
    Friday and Saturday at 8pm, 9pm and 10pm | Temporary exhibition
    Duration: 2 hours
    The Palais invites the company For Happy People & Co for a carte blanche in the exhibition Chaque vie est une histoire. Under the artistic direction of director Jean-François Auguste, five dazzling, multi-talented actors and actresses take over the museum spaces, offering a performative stroll combining text, dance and song.

Installations

  • Toussaint Louverture
    Raphaël Barontini
    Friday and Saturday | Auditorium
    Raphaël Barontini proposes an installation in homage to the figure of Toussaint Louverture, the Haitian hero of the fight against slavery. Raphaël Barontini finds his inspiration in the legacies left by the figures of historical liberation movements. In a collage style combining photography, silkscreen, painting and digital prints, the artist develops a work in motion.

  • Je suis ému.e mais je ne comprends pas pourquoi
    Jack&Jane Productions
    Friday and Saturday | Salon Asie
    Jeanne Paravert and Jack Souvant create a sound installation that brings these fragments of multiple stories to the ear. An intimate device that appeals to our senses and imaginations.

Concerts

  • Mah Damba & La Litanie des Cimes
    Friday at 10:30pm | Forum
    Duration: 45 minutes
    The spellbinding presence of singer Mah Damba meets the melodies of trio La Litanie des Cimes (violin, cello, clarinet) for a timeless concert.

  • Exillians - Mike Ladd, T.I.T, Juice Aleem
    Saturday at 10:30pm | Auditorium
    Duration: 1 hour
    Exillians is the explosive encounter of three poet-rappers from the African diaspora who question the notion of exile and travel. A concert combining poetic rap, calypso, jazz, Afro, soul and electro, to sail the seas as well as the skies. For the Exillians concert, artist Raphaël Barontini creates a digital collage set.

A listed Art Deco jewel dating back to 1931, free entertainment and an abundance of culture - what more could you want? Make the most of this not-to-be-missed event, before we meet up again for the next one!

Practical information

Dates and Opening Time
From February 7, 2025 to February 8, 2025

× Approximate opening times: to confirm opening times, please contact the establishment.

    Location

    293 Avenue Daumesnil
    75012 Paris 12

    Route planner

    Accessibility info

    Prices
    Free

    Recommended age
    For all

    Official website
    www.palais-portedoree.fr

    More information
    Free on reservation

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