Echoing the exhibition Singular: artists, self-taught, freedwomen presented at the LaM (October 3, 2026 – February 14, 2027), these two days focus on women artists, to those who created at the edge, on the fringes of traditional artistic circuits, or whose work has been left out of art history. They allow to cross paths marked by different forms of marginalization (social, cultural, geographic or gender-related) , whether they are anonymous artists, self-taught, associated with outsider art, or whose practices and trajectories have escaped the usual frameworks of recognition.
By going beyond the opposition between center and margin, these days propose to think about what connects these plural experiences, and to question relationships, which are often complex, between women artists and forms of exclusion. It will notably examine production contexts located outside the “legitimate” frameworks of art, situations of relegation—psychiatric, social, geographic, among other things — as well as the practices and devious means by which certain works may have come into being and circulated.
These days will also be an opportunity to question the role and responsibility of institutions in the recognition, exhibition and transmission of these works. How can we make visible trajectories that have long been kept apart without, however, confining them to new categories? How can we pass on these works without ignoring the contexts, tensions, and power relations that have run through their history? It will thus be a question of reflecting on the ways in which institutions can contribute to making art narratives evolve, while remaining attentive to the plurality and singularity of artistic paths.
At a time when museums are questioning their practices, narratives, and ways of welcoming diversity, the LaM offers a series of meetings devoted to relationships, which are complex and sometimes paradoxical, between the artistic forms produced outside the consecrated frames of art and the institutions that recognize them, expose them. At the crossroads of outsider, modern and contemporary art, the collections of the LaM offer a privileged field to question these processes of recognition and the categories that accompany them, in the continuity of the history of a museum of singularities. These study days are part of a long-term initiative led by the LaM, like the symposium “Right to Rough” held in December 2025.
Steering committee
Geneviève Fraisse – philosopher, emeritus research director at CNRS/CRAL – EHESS
Sébastien Faucon – director, LaM
Jeanne-Bathilde Lacourt – chief curator, head of the conservation department, LaM
Grégoire Prangé – head of the prospective program, publishing and research, LaM
Christophe Boulanger – conservation attaché in charge of art brut, LaM