“Outings” brings faces from Geneva’s Art & History Museum to a corner near you

FROM the 10th of this month until 10 January 2016, keep your eyes open for 60 famous faces usually found only on the walls of Geneva’s venerable Art and History Museum. They’ll be there thanks to “Outings”, a global project by French visual artist Julien de Casabianca to bring masterpieces out of museums and into communities with the help of local students.

The streets of Plainpalais, Jonction, Saint-Jean, les Grottes, Pâquis and Eaux-Vives will be playing host to 60 new (yet old) faces that up till now were exposed on an entirely different set of walls, those of the city’s Art and History Museum (MAH).

They will be there because a posse of local 8th graders, working under the guidance of French visual artist and filmmaker Julien de Casabianca, have been let loose with their smartphones and invited to snap the likenesses of people featured in some of the Museum’s finest artworks.

Add high-quality printing on a human scale and lots of snipping and pasting from 6-9 October and the young protégé(e)s and their Svengali will gradually unveil the fruit of their labors for all to admire (or innocently wander past) for the next three months.

For Outings, the world’s streets are its stage

Geneva’s involvement is part of the Outings global participative initiative launched by de Casabianca in 2014 as a means to “foster a link between artworks, public spaces and collective culture” and to promote the involvement of young people in the creative process.

Individuals around the world have also been encouraged to create their own installations so that at present some 200 people in 50 cities on five continents are participating, with stunning results.

Other events to accompany the showing

The project’s formal inauguration in Geneva takes place on Saturday, 10 October at 3pm at the Plainpalais Salle Communale. Guided tours of the installations by the artist will take place on Sunday, 11 October.

Parallel with the project, from 10 October to 29 November, the MAH will present an exhibition of Julien de Casabianca’s photographs showing examples of Outings installations from around the world.

In addition, a two-hour balade à vélo street-littérature (bicycle tour) followed by a visit to the Outings exhibition is scheduled for Saturday, 24 and Sunday, 25 October at 2pm. (Registration required)

For full programme details and to see a map outlining the exact placement of the artworks throughout the city, just click here.

I can’t wait to get my camera out for some spontaneous snaps as passers-by take in their new neighbors. It should certainly make for some interesting faces in addition to the ones pasted on the walls.

Note: Main photo is from “Outings” New Orleans, USA.