Paris Art Week is now an established part of the fair circuit, and with it, Contributions, the biennial festival that might just be the city’s most thoughtful counterpoint to the fair frenzy. Founded by design consultants Anna Caradeuc and Élise Daunay, the nonprofit project reimagines what a design presentation can be: part exhibition, part experiment, part collective love letter to collaboration itself.
This year’s edition unfolded across five venues in Paris, from October 20–25, and takes music as its point of departure, exploring sound as a companion to design. Four of the five installations pair designers with musicians, with soundscapes woven through the spaces via French HiFi manufacturer La Boîte Concept. The result feels like a multi-sensory choreography rather than a traditional show.
This year’s edition unfolded across five venues in Paris, from October 20–25, and takes music as its point of departure, exploring sound as a companion to design. Four of the five installations pair designers with musicians, with soundscapes woven through the spaces via French HiFi manufacturer La Boîte Concept. The result feels like a multi-sensory choreography rather than a traditional show.
Photography by Pauline Chardin
Tucked inside the Union Internationale de la Jeunesse, a cultural hub in what was once the Tati department store, Listening Room centers on Nifemi Marcus-Bello’s reimagined M2 Shelf, fitted with a custom speaker by La Boîte concept. Created in collaboration with Brazilian musician Rodrigo Amarante and featuring modular seating by Paris-based designer Thomas Morineau Barthelemy, the installation transforms the familiar living-room form into something more intimate: a vessel for sound and memory.
Photography by DePasquale Maffini
Housed at La Pièce, Next to Us brings together a dreamlike cast – Sylvia Corrette, Luna Paiva, Valerie Name Bolaño, Jeanne Tresvaux du Fraval, and Adrian Edeline – in a meditation on enchantment and transformation. At its center is Corrette’s Roxanne, Princesse des Djinns (1989), a neo-baroque fantasy of thrones and crescent moons, presented by Galerie Jaïs. Around it orbit Paiva’s delicate Aura drawings, Bolaño’s celestial glass pendants, and Tresvaux du Fraval’s poetic scenography, all underscored by Edeline’s hypnotic soundscape for La Boîte concept.
Photography by Alexandre Onimus
At Lucid Interval, a hidden Paris space that feels like the meeting place for a secret society, Sleeping with Ghosts brings together Pauline Esparon, Juliette Teste, and musician Michelle Blades in a hauntingly tactile conversation between matter and spirit. Blades’ ethereal score drifts through it all, turning the space into something between a chapel and a hallucination – a communion of skin, sound, and stone.
Photography by Kate Devine
Presented by Antwerp gallery ST VINCENTS, The Bells marks designer Emily Thurman’s Paris debut, a duet with musician Kevin Morby at Atelier Alterio, the Montmartre studio opening to the public for the first time. Thurman’s rocking chair and stool, strung with bronze and antique bells assembled with silversmith Zoé Mohm, explore memory through movement and sound.
At Out of the blue wine bar turned micro-cinema, Una Lunghissima Ombra pairs Italian musician Andrea Laszlo De Simone’s new audiovisual album with a revival of Bar Metals, the cult Milanese trattoria reimagined by Paris dealer Harold Mollet. Downstairs, De Simone’s cinematic meditation on shadow and emotion flickers quietly in the dark; upstairs, visitors sip ombrette among original Metals furniture from the 1990s.
At its heart, Contributions is about about space where design stretches into other forms of expression and community. As Daunay puts it: “Our briefs to both designers and musicians were simple. At the core of this year’s program is the joy of bringing together people we admire, and witnessing how their dialogue can move others.”
At its heart, Contributions is about about space where design stretches into other forms of expression and community. As Daunay puts it: “Our briefs to both designers and musicians were simple. At the core of this year’s program is the joy of bringing together people we admire, and witnessing how their dialogue can move others.”
