Playing with its forced invisibility during the pandemic, this project—both biting and playful—places art where it cannot escape the viewer’s gaze, regardless of imposed restrictions. The street-facing window, in its interplay between public and private, the intimate and the social, is a quintessential site of display, open to the passerby’s view and engaging with the codes of desire and theatricality.

All the artists involved in the Tout doit disparaitre (Everything Must Go) project share a practice that, in its diversity, subverts everyday consumer objects and/or draws on popular culture and consumer society, with its codes and fantasies. With works installed in street-facing shop windows, the visual ambiguity at the heart of their practice becomes all the more striking.

The title can be understood on several levels: as an advertising slogan designed to attract customers, but also as a resonant call to reconsider the place of art in our society. In the context of a pandemic, when debates unfortunately centred on what was deemed essential and what was not, this project asserts that the experience of art—because it moves us, challenges us, or even shocks us—is vital to our shared space. What must disappear, then, is perhaps not art itself, but rather our discouragement in the face of a supposedly hopeless world. And what must emerge, by contrast, is a revitalised shared space. By fostering mutual solidarities with local public and private partners, all severely affected by the crisis, the Everything Must Go project aims to sow the seeds of a communal life to be reinvented.

Curator: Sandra Patron

With: Caroline Achaintre, Virginie Barré, Alicia Framis, Keith Haring, Laurent Le Deunff, Nicolas Milhé, Présence Panchounette and Takako Saito.

An off-site project by the Capc, organised as part of the Ressources, Bordeaux Cultural Season 2021.

Exhibition partners: 
• FONCIÈRE RIVAGE, Centre Commercial Saint-Christoly
• Foncière Wereldhave, Centre Commercial Mériadeck
• VINCI Immobilier, Centre Mériadeck (rue Bonnaffé)
• Vitrine des Essais – galerie d'art du lycée Michel-Montaigne

The Capc thanks: 
The Centre national des arts plastiques ; the galerie Semiose, Paris ; The galerie Loevenbruck, Paris ; Keith Haring Foundation. 
The Jardin botanique / Direction des espaces verts de la ville de Bordeaux ; The service transports et manifestations (Transport and Event Department)/ Direction Logistique Évènementiel de la ville de Bordeaux ; The Ronde des quartiers.