Artists Set Sail: An Onboard Residency

This collective exhibition brings together the work of nine artists and creators who embarked between 2023 and 2024 aboard the container ship Marius, offering an artistic perspective on the contemporary realities of maritime transport and globalisation.

Conceived as an immersive experience, the residency invites artists from all disciplines to spend several days or weeks living alongside the crew, from the ship’s bridge to the ports of call. Connecting Europe, the United States and the Pacific territories, this exceptional maritime journey places the sea at the heart of artistic imagination while questioning the human, economic and geopolitical challenges of transoceanic exchanges.

Presented through illustrations, photographs, videos, sketchbooks, texts and narrative works, the creations on display offer a sensitive and multifaceted view of the maritime world today. Shown in the museum’s current affairs space and entrance hall, with free admission, the exhibition will also be accompanied by a series of meetings with the artists, extending the reflection on transatlantic relations and onboard artistic creation.

Literature

Savannah (Georgia, USA) > Tahiti • August–September 2023 • 3 weeks

Author of around twenty works—including novels, biographical essays, children’s books and photography—Arno Bertina spent three weeks at sea in August 2023, travelling from Savannah to Papeete via the Caribbean, the Panama Canal and the Pacific Ocean. His reflections were published in States, a magazine produced and edited by Villa Albertine.

He presents proofs from his latest novel along with 24 photographs taken on board.

Graphic novel

Le Havre > New York • June 2024 • 10 days - Philadelphia > Le Havre • November–December 2024 • 17 days

In 2024, Julia Bourdet undertook a journey without flying, crossing the United States by bicycle and train to meet Americans whose relationship to ecology will inspire an illustrated book. On both the outbound and return journeys, she crossed the Atlantic aboard Marius, drawing and questioning the perceptions of those who live to the rhythm of the sea.

She presents drawings and portraits depicting life on board.

Visual arts

Le Havre > New York • August 2023 • 10 days

Pierre Buttin, a French illustrator based in London and a regular contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, embarked in Le Havre in August 2023 bound for New York. His crossing gave rise to a series of illustrations, some of which were published in States. 

He presents a selection of these works.

Literature

Tahiti > Brisbane (Australia) • January 2025 • 2 weeks

In December 2024, Pierre Ducrozet’s onboard residency inspired his novel project, whose plot—rooted in both the adventure novel and the coming-of-age tradition—unfolds largely at sea, aboard a container ship heading towards a remote island in the Pacific.

He presents a reading from his novel.

Visual arts

Nouméa > Savannah (Georgia, USA) • April–May 2024 • 6 weeks

Drawing on a long artistic practice dedicated to maritime worlds (installations, videos, drawings and sculptures), Elsa Guillaume took advantage of the vast space offered by the container ship to work both on sketchbook drawings—suited to documenting everyday life on board—and on larger formats, allowing her to further develop this graphic exploration.

She presents selected sketchbooks.

Visual arts

Le Havre > Brisbane (Australia) • November 2023–January 2024 • 8 weeks

Photographer Grégoire Korganow produced a photographic body of work from his 53-day residency between Le Havre and Brisbane entitled Facing the Sea. The project will be shown in exhibitions, including its first presentation at Le Havre Normandie University Library (20 October–19 December 2025), and published.

He presents a selection of photographs taken during the crossing.

Design & crafts

Savannah (Georgia, USA) > Dunkirk • February 2024 • 3 weeks

Travelling from Savannah to Dunkirk, designer Mathilde Pellé conducted an investigation into non-operational objects on board Marius: on the one hand, crew members’ personal belongings, and on the other, goods transported in containers (Non-Operational On Board Objects). Her work explores the meanings attached to these objects, questioning notions of need and the material environments produced by our societies.

She presents two videos shown as a diptych.

Digital creation

New York > Tahiti • March 2024 • 4 weeks

In March, travelling between New York and Papeete, podcast director Florence de Schlichting explored the world of maritime transport through the sounds and voices encountered aboard Marius. Her work will result in new episodes of a podcast dedicated to the crossing.

She presents an excerpt from this podcast.

Visual arts

Tahiti > Savannah (Georgia, USA) • July–August 2024 • 8 weeks

From Papeete to Savannah, Clément Verger developed reflections on humanity’s influence on its environment, in continuity with his artistic and scientific project Circumnavigations, launched in 2016 and dedicated to the impact of Captain James Cook’s voyages on global landscapes.

He presents a composition combining photographs and objects.

Villa Albertine 

Villa Albertine is an institution of the Embassy of France in the United States, supported by the French government and the Albertine Foundation. Its mission is to strengthen ties between the United States, France and the French-speaking world through culture and education. In the cultural field, Villa Albertine offers artists, creators, thinkers and professionals around sixty research residencies per year across the United States, as well as professional immersion programmes and support for the dissemination of their work to American audiences. Villa Albertine is present in ten major American cities—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, New Orleans, San Francisco and Washington—and publishes an annual magazine entitled States. Its New York headquarters also houses the Albertine Bookstore.

Marfret

Founded in 1951, Marfret  is a French shipping company specialising in the transport of goods in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific. It serves major ports of global trade as well as more remote ports in France’s overseas territories. Since 2007, the company has developed a cultural sponsorship programme welcoming artists aboard its ships and in its agencies. These immersions, both on land and at sea, offer artists a comprehensive experience of the shipping world. Ships, ports and containers become spaces of creation, where work, precise gestures and the rhythm of life on board nourish artistic reflection. By fostering dialogue between art and maritime transport, these residencies reveal the poetry of this vector of global trade. Marfret demonstrates that a ship is more than a means of transport: it is a place of encounter, creation and sharing.