MIZAHA PARIS

Mizaha Paris is a residency and exhibition program dedicated to artists from the African continent and its diaspora, operated in the Parisian space of Fondation H, in the heart of the Marais.

Each year, three to four artists are invited to participate in Mizaha Paris and develop their projects during residences at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris, followed by exhibitions in the Parisian space of Fondation H. A two to three-month solo exhibition always follows their residency, as the space is not intended to present work pre-existing the residency period.

The program allows for a truly experimental dimension, and a great deal of leeway in the format of collaborations with guest artists, who are always invited on an individual basis, never as part of a group, enabling Fondation H’s team to provide a real personal support for each project.

The space can be the setting for in-situ installations (Hyacinthe Ouattara, M'barka Amor, Christian Sanna, Temandrota, Adji Dieye, Ange Dakouo, Magalie Grondin), and is also regularly transformed into a studio by artists who take up residencye there for a few months at a time(Maya Inès Touam, Adelaide Damoah, Johanna Mirabel, Roxane Mbanga).

The four artists invited to Paris in 2024 are Cynthia Colney, Roxane Mbanga, Magalie Grondin and Sènami Donoumassou.

CYNTHIA COLNEY
‍January - February

Cynthia Colney, a French-Malagasy artist, was born in 1991. She studied plastic arts and design in France, where she discovered various drawing techniques that she would develop further a few years later. Femininity and identity are omnipresent in the artist’s work, whose luminous colors, symbols and dreamlike imagery celebrate feminine beauty and nature. She oscillates between painting and digital illustration and is familiarizing herself with the practice of ceramics.

ROXANE BANGA
‍April - May

Born in 1996, Roxanne is a multidisciplinary Cameroonian and French artist, originally from Guadeloupe. Roxanne is a storyteller working at the intersection of fashion, film, graphic design, photography, writing and performance. Her research revolves around the relationship between the lived, intimate body and the perceived body, which becomes a social receptacle for the projections of the exterior. Through her installations, she questions, listens and transcribes the voices of women with plural identities.

MAGALIE GRONDIN
‍June - July

Magalie Grondin is a French multidisciplinary artist from La Réunion. Magalie Grondin’s research metaphorizes social and historical events of Reunion Island, particularly those linked to exile. She explores the meanders of her multiple identities, both individual and collective, of exile, and of sensitive relationships to the body(ies) in painting, volume, installation and photography.

SÈNAMI DONOUMASSOU
‍September - November

Born in 1991, Sènami Donoumassou explores notions of identity, heritage and history in filigree with her artistic practice. Through her creations, which oscillate between photograms, protean installations and drawings, she experiments with the scope of light's technical and poetic potential.

After a creative residency at Le Fresnoy - Studio national des arts contemporains, where the artist explored the metaphorical, plastic and aesthetic dimensions of the photogram, Sènami Donoumassou will present her first solo exhibition, Chimie des traces [Traces Chemistry], at the Institut Français de Cotonou in 2019, followed in 2022 by Xógbé at Le Centre (Abomey-Calavi).

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