S O N D E R
SONDER
Paths cross. Today is a day of significance for many people. Today someone will fall in love, an artist will have their grand opening, someone will be born, another will mourn.Today is both ordinary and extraordinary: for you woke up with breath in your lungs and our paths have crossed. Amidst the refugee crisis, globalisation, climate change and culture wars we hope to create a space of rest, reflection and welcome. We all partake in a story of love and brokenheartedness, hope and healing, dreams and reality. We are all on a pilgrimage of finding home and belonging. In the SONDER exhibition at La Fondation des Etats Unis, you will find a broken mirror and Iranian rug found on the streets of Paris, furniture from the La Fondation des Etats Unis in 1930s used by generations of students living and studying here, words from our diaries, love letters and most importantly: space. You are invited to create with us.
Opening Hours
Monday to Friday from 10am to 12:30pm and 2:30pm to 5:30pm.
Evenings or weekends by appointment only: communication@feusa.org
Evenings or weekends by appointment only: communication@feusa.org
About the Artists
Hope Curran
« My name is Hope and my life is messy…. I want to learn the language of light, the DNA of heaven held in my heart– trying to find home amongst the many. Hope is defined as the feeling of expectation and the dream for something to happen. My name has inspired a lifelong creative search for joy, beauty, adventure, color, community, and connection. To hope is to not yet have, yet hold close. I’ve been in Paris for three years after graduating from UC Santa Barbara working alongside Transform and Agapé Arts and pursuing a Masters in Art at Pantheon-Sorbonne. A multidisciplinary approach allows me to work on the themes of memory, relational aesthetics and light through photography, poetry, performance and installation. These are my prayers and promises written in ink, portraits of light. Messy like me, full of mistakes and typos, caught in between heaven and home. »
« My name is Hope and my life is messy…. I want to learn the language of light, the DNA of heaven held in my heart– trying to find home amongst the many. Hope is defined as the feeling of expectation and the dream for something to happen. My name has inspired a lifelong creative search for joy, beauty, adventure, color, community, and connection. To hope is to not yet have, yet hold close. I’ve been in Paris for three years after graduating from UC Santa Barbara working alongside Transform and Agapé Arts and pursuing a Masters in Art at Pantheon-Sorbonne. A multidisciplinary approach allows me to work on the themes of memory, relational aesthetics and light through photography, poetry, performance and installation. These are my prayers and promises written in ink, portraits of light. Messy like me, full of mistakes and typos, caught in between heaven and home. »
Isabelle Hoonan
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest but currently residing in Paris, Isabelle is a writer who also identifies as a visual artist. Currently enrolled at Paris College of Art’s Transdisciplinary New Media Master’s program (and set to graduate in May), her focus is in writing but primarily storytelling in multidisciplinary forms. Identifying as a visual artist as well as a writer, she finds inspiration in poetry and visuals that inform the audience about her own inner discovery that they may relate to. Her work focuses primarily on essays, blogging, and journalism, yet Paris has brought her back to writing poetry and painting again while staying at FEU. Analyzing interpersonal and intrapersonal connection is the base of how she writes, influencing the questions she asks and the subjects she seeks to understand better through telling their story through her writing. Looking deeper at where people call home and the boundaries of their interior walls — how they explore, or wonder while sondering — is a driving inspiration in her multimedia writing.
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest but currently residing in Paris, Isabelle is a writer who also identifies as a visual artist. Currently enrolled at Paris College of Art’s Transdisciplinary New Media Master’s program (and set to graduate in May), her focus is in writing but primarily storytelling in multidisciplinary forms. Identifying as a visual artist as well as a writer, she finds inspiration in poetry and visuals that inform the audience about her own inner discovery that they may relate to. Her work focuses primarily on essays, blogging, and journalism, yet Paris has brought her back to writing poetry and painting again while staying at FEU. Analyzing interpersonal and intrapersonal connection is the base of how she writes, influencing the questions she asks and the subjects she seeks to understand better through telling their story through her writing. Looking deeper at where people call home and the boundaries of their interior walls — how they explore, or wonder while sondering — is a driving inspiration in her multimedia writing.
Photos by Anastasia Glock
Photos by AHN Yohan
The home is a gallery of life. The walls of our homes are covered with our identity. Going into someone’s home for the first time you are able to decode cultural, economic, social and even religious values and practices. Family photos covering the refrigerator, medicine cabinets full of perfume and self care products, to-do lists, cupboards of favorite mugs, minimal closets, a kitchen full of spices.
