Rester. Étranger was born in 2014 in Paris, out of a series of encounters between artist Barbara Manzetti and a Rroma family, and later, in 2016, young Sudanese asylum seekers – Abdellah Ismail, Hussein Abdallah, Abdelaziz Abdelkarim, Masri Omar and Omar Haroune – during French courses organised by the Bureau d’accueil et d’accompagnement des migrants. In 2017 these conversations relocated to La Ménagerie de Verre, where B. Manzetti, Barbara Coffy and Tanguy Nédélec established a permanent presence in the hall, and invited choreographers, performers and authors to join them. Conducting linguistic experiments that put the hospitality of the French language to the test, a sort of choral writing was invented and publicly performed. Relationships were forged and rapidly extended beyond the limits of an artistic or militant framework, expanding towards adoption and shared housing. New characters entered and exited, and in doing so became the co-authors of Rester. Étranger – a name that has always designated both the contributors and the work itself. The grouping is a radical gesture that seeks to unite, within one work, different people with differing legal rights. Asylum requests, threats of expulsion, administrative and economic precarity and racism are all integral parts of Rester. Étranger, at times causing the brutal separation of members of a group that, since 2017, has considered itself a family.

In 2018, the first exhibition of Rester. Étranger took place at La Terrasse, an art space in Nanterre. The family established their presence, covering the windows with their writings. This act voluntarily blurred the boundaries between interior and exterior, and has since reappeared as part of the group’s residencies and performances, at the Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers (2018), at Bétonsalon (2021) and at the foundation AWARE – Villa Vassilieff (2021). It can also be witnessed at the Maison Rester. Étranger, founded in 2020 in Saint-Denis. A house-book, a house-work, a publishing house, a living space, a writing residency (one that draws up author contracts as part of asylum applications), a garden and a recording studio, the house has been a home, for longer or shorter stays, to Hassan Abdallaye, Sabrina Pennacchietti, Youssouf Hassan, Nicole Koffi, Mohamed Bamba, Barbara Coffy, Baris Yarsel, Kassim Koné, Bartolomeo Terrade, Caroline Sebilleau, Ismail Afghan, Ousmane Cissé, Izadine Yahia, Souleymane Soumah, Olivier Marbœuf, Léonce Noah and Acauã Shereya Aniruddha Biswas. In this house, the notion of hospitality that is central to Rester. Étranger is anchored in space, and in concrete gestures, that work daily to resist the exterior aggressions of administration, domestic frictions and gender norms.

Rester. Étranger has never ceased creating its own work spaces and forms of publication. These have variously included a website (now offline), a radio station on the internet radio r22 Tout-monde (2017–2022), a position in 2018 as Labex Arts-H2H chair of excellence at Université Paris 8 (alongside participation in the occupation of the university by exiled people and their supporters), a research notebook on the Qalqalah platform (2020–2022) and a revue written in ‘français langue étrangée’ or ‘foreign French language’ (France au revoir, from 2020). In 2020, Rester. Étranger received the ‘La Vie Bonne’ AWARE prize, leading to the acquisition by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques of the Rester. Étranger corpus (2014–2021) along with an exhibition at Villa Vassilieff (2023). In 2024, Éditions B42 published Rester. Étranger, a book that represents the latest manifestation of a family-oeuvre in a constant state of creation.