Reinhabiting the Villa Benkemoun : a poetic performance by Gerard & Kelly

Visual artists and filmmakers Brennan Gerard and Ryan Kelly have, since the early 2000s, developed a distinctive body of work that brings together choreography, storytelling, site, and architecture.

In 2014, the artist duo took the Schindler House, designed by R. M. Schindler in Los Angeles in 1922, as the starting point for Modern Living, an ongoing series of poetic performances that breathe new life into twentieth-century architectural manifestos, often uninhabited and elevated to the status of icons. This year, Villa Benkemoun marks a new chapter in the project, where the relationships between the body, domestic space, family, and intimacy are once again brought into play.

Designed in the early 1970s by architect Émile Sala, Villa Benkemoun presents a hybrid architectural language, situated between sculptural modernism with organic undertones and a Mediterranean dreamscape. A true synthesis of the arts unfolds within the house, with Émile Sala commissioning interior designer Robert Heams to shape the interiors and select the color palette, as well as artist and designer Max Sauze to create the fireplace in metal sheets.

Simone and Pierre Benkemoun, for whom the house was built, lived there for more than four decades, alongside their children and friends. In 2017, their daughter Brigitte Benkemoun and her husband Thierry Demaizière were entrusted with the task of bringing new life to the house, which now hosts exhibitions and other events dedicated to promoting artistic creation. In search of a lived-in modernity and evolving uses, the artists draw on this legacy and this sense of familial continuity.