Ambush #10: Pauline Fondevila

Based on an investigation into the residual, the marginal, or the furtive as generators of knowledge, Pauline Fondevila sets in motion a process of storytelling, collective construction, and the programming of nighttime events and learning experiences. Taking Eina Bosc as its setting, The School of the Night proposes the physical and mental construction of a counter-school fuelled by the references, fantasies, and ghosts of its participants, who become its builders, programmers, students, architects, and construction workers over the course of a week. The workshop explores dichotomies between the latent and the explicit, the ephemeral and the indelible, the cycles of sleep and social activity, to give rise to a pedagogical infrastructure that is also an imaginary and tangible refuge. Explorations of lunar, alien, paranormal, and interspecies imaginaries unleash a process of spatial fabulation through drawing, painting, lighting, and ephemeral construction, as well as group cooking and nighttime celebrations.

Pauline Fondevila (1972, Le Havre) is a French visual artist, writer, curator, educator and musician based in Argentina. She studied letters and plastic arts in Rouen, Paris, Le Havre and Lyon, and was an artist in residence at Hangar (2004-2006, Barcelona) and at Casa Vecina (2012, Mexico City). Her work develops between various geographical, linguistic and artistic territories, and always involves drawing and words, also bringing into resonance multiple references that include plastic arts, music, literature, comics, revolutionary movements and alternative culture. Fondevila is a member of the band Perro Fantasma (Perro Fantasma, 2017 and Corazón y Alma, 2020) and has published two short novels with Iván Rosado publishing house, Una casa y un drum (2015) and Cinco Días en Colón (2018). Since 2020, she curates Explorar el Azar, an exhibition programme at Bon Scott Bar (Rosario). Her work has been exhibited at Palais de Tokyo (Paris), MUSAC (León), Momentum X (Nordic Countries Biennial, Norway), Casal Solleric (Palma de Mallorca). In 2024, Fondevila prepares Dibujar en un mundo malo in collaboration with Samuel Labadie at etHALL (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat). Her project La Escuela de la Noche was recently exhibited as an solo exhibition (2023, Diego Obligado Gallery).