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Keywa Henri, Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma (Story of Beads: Anaxi’s Choice), 2025, animation, 4’19 mins
© AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions
Montparnasse – Bienvenüe metro station, Exit 2, Lines 4, 6, 12 and 13
Villa Vassilieff is accessible to visitors using wheeled devices or who have mobility difficulties thanks to special facilities (access ramp, adapted toilets, and a lift).
In addition, several reserved parking spaces are available close to the Villa Vassilieff:
• in front of 4 rue d’Alençon, 75015 Paris
• in front of 7 rue Antoine Bourdelle, 75015 Paris
• in front of 23 rue de l’Arrivée, 75015 Paris
Consult the map of adapted parking spaces in Paris here.
During the Journées du Matrimoine 2025, AWARE invites kids, young people and those accompanying them — family, friends, teachers, educators — to discover the Villa Vassilieff through workshops and artistic creations conceived by six artists in dialogue with AWARE’s missions and its research centre.
This event is an opportunity for the association to share information about its work and the history of the Villa Vassilieff, and to honour six artists who have worked with it throughout the year. The guest artists — Cheryl Ann Bolden, Keywa Henri, Morgane Baffier and the Nest collective, made up of Park Chae Biole, Park Chae Dalle and Constance de Raucourt — have developed their work as part of AWARE’s residency, education and research programmes.
Saturday, September 20 and Sunday, September 21: open programming
Keywa Henri, Kalin’a Tɨlewuyu artist (indigenous nation of ‘French Guyana’) will present their animated short film Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma [Story of beads: Anaxi’s choice], created as part of the research programme “The Origin of Others. Rewriting the history of art in the Americas, from the 19th century to the present day”. Freely inspired by the founding stories of the Kalin’a Tɨlewuyu nation, this fable invites us to follow the adventures of Anaxi, an emblematic figure of Kalin’a cosmovision, through the art of Native beading, an ancestral female practice. In a workshop for anyone aged 7 and over, Keywa Henri will share anecdotes and secrets from the making of the film, exploring the art of beadwork, from meaning to motif, from idea to finished object, and exploring the many facets of this practice.
The Nest collective, in residency at AWARE’s research centre in 2025, is proposing to explore a history of women that is both personal and subjective, through workshops on textile masks as well as culinary and imaginary recipes. Open to everyone aged 4 and over, these participatory workshops invite participants to pay tribute to the female figures who have marked their lives, to what they have passed on to them and to what they inspire in them. Following in the footsteps of the evolving installation work that the collective is developing as part of its residency at AWARE, it will intervene in the Villa space to accompany these workshops.
The artist-lecturer Morgane Baffier has been associated with AWARE’s educational programme at the Villa Vassilieff since 2023. To mark the Journées du Matrimoine (Heritage Days), she is presenting for the first time her lecture “Les M&M’s l’ont fait” [The M&M’s did it], conceived as part of this programme. Starting from the observation that women are under-represented in art, Morgane Baffier uses the codes of scholarly discourse and the lecture to reinterpret the past and question our certainties. By playing on misleading causalities, she encourages us to rethink the way in which historical narratives and gender stereotypes are constructed.
The AWARE team will be on hand throughout the weekend to tell you all about the association’s missions and the history of the Villa Vassilieff. This emblematic site in the Montparnasse district bears the name of the artist Marie Vassilieff, who moved there in 1912 and made it her studio, a place for training and parties, a canteen and a reception area for artists and thinkers from all over the world. This highly symbolic space has been redesigned by designer matali crasset for AWARE, and now houses its research centre entirely dedicated to women and non-binary artists.
Friday, September 19: workshops for groups of high-school students, on reservation
Nominated for the AWARE 2023 Prize and collaborating with the association’s educational programme since 2024, Cheryl Ann Bolden is offering the “Encounters with uncomfortable archives” workshop. This encounter provides an opportunity to reflect on archives, collective memory, heritage and racism using a selection of objects from the artist’s collection, including family mementos, finds, abandoned objects, historical artefacts and popular culture. Students are invited to meet, handle and interpret these objects, which will then be presented and contextualised by the artist.
Cheryl Ann Bolden, « Encounters with uncomfortable archives »: Workshops for high school classes
To make a reservation or obtain information about this offer, please contact Tamara Choukair Hilal at documentation[@]aware-art.org
Keywa Henri: Beading workshop, from age 7
Based on the short film Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma, which the artist will share anecdotes and secrets about making, we will explore the art of beading, from meaning to motif, from idea to finished object, to tackle the many facets of this practice.
Collectif Nest: Textile mask workshop, from age 4
In this workshop, we’ll create masks from textiles. You can bring your own fabrics to cut out; we’ll also make some available.
Through these creations, we will seek to represent forms or memories that evoke the women who inspire us, be they intimate stories, symbols or sensations.
Morgane Baffier, "Les M&M's l'ont fait": Lecture-performance, from age 12
Starting with the observation that women artists are under-represented in collections and exhibitions, Morgane Baffier takes us on a journey of logical conclusions and deductions to reinterpret the past and predict future attitudes to gender.
AWARE team presence and screenings
Screening of the animated short Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma by Keywa Henri.
Screening of a selection of videos from the animated series “Petites histoires de grandes artistes” produced by AWARE, aimed at children aged 7 and over as well as older children.
Keywa Henri: Beading workshop, from age 7
Based on the short film Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma, which the artist will share anecdotes and secrets about making, we will explore the art of beading, from meaning to motif, from idea to finished object, to tackle the many facets of this practice.
Collectif Nest, "Le grand livre de recettes": Workshop from age 4
We invite you to write, draw and invent recipes, culinary or imaginary, handed down by a key female figure in your life. Whether real or fictional, these recipes will form the pages of a large collective book, a tribute to these women and their legacy.
AWARE team presence and screenings
Screening of the animated short Kassulu tolilɨ: Anaxi wonumingalɨ lo moloma by Keywa Henri.
Screening of a selection of videos from the animated series “Petites histoires de grandes artistes” produced by AWARE, aimed at children aged 7 and over as well as older children.
Morgane Baffier is an artist-lecturer whose surname derives from the ancient Occitan “bafa” meaning “swindle”, and this information may be important in understanding her work. Using graphics, fabricated images, and internet videos, she elaborates all manner of metaphysical theories and reflections, developing them to the point of absurdity. In a bid to deconstruct knowledge, she appropriates the codes used in business, the media, and intellectual circles, and mocks, with finesse and humor, the systems of power and authority that condition access to speech.
Cheryl Ann Bolden is an artist, collector and archivist. She is the descendant of six generations of African Americans. In 1998, she moved to Paris and founded Precious Cargo, a nomadic museum that brings together historical objects that transmit stories of the African diaspora. Her artistic practice is primarily based on objects which carry memory. She works with original objects and documents which bear witness to the trade of enslaved people as well as to the periods of segregation and colonialism in the United States and in Europe. She regularly holds events in different communities, in middle and high schools, inviting participants to interact with the archives, to “activate” them, touching them and appropriating them in order to engage with and experience the history they contain, inciting both dialogue and reflection. By “reactivating” objects normally destined for a museum environment, C.A. Bolden gives the public – issued from the diaspora or not – the possibility of reappropriating these elements and their memory, in an intimate and, paradoxically, dedramatised way. Rejecting the idea of the inaccessible archive kept behind glass, C. A. Bolden instead brings hers to life, through performances, installations and collages.
Keywa Henri is a Franco-Brazilian multidisciplinary artist and independent researcher, born in Kaulu/Kourou in French Guiana. The first Kalin’a Tɨlewuyu (indigenous nation of French Guiana) to graduate from the Beaux-Arts de Lyon in France, they currently live and work between French Guiana and France. They develop a protean practice that exposes intersectional issues, exploring the visual arts, cinema, literature and fashion. They elaborate a reflection rooted in the Histories of the Original Peoples of Abya Yala (‘Americas’) and work towards an indigenous protagonism in our contemporary global society, while questioning its place in the French context.
The Nest collective is a group of curators and artists founded in 2022, made up of Park Chae Biole, Constance de Raucourt and Park Chae Dalle. As part of this project, they explore ways of inhabiting a space: settling in, living there, but also leaving to recreate a space elsewhere – in a different configuration, country or landscape. Between 2022 and 2025, the project was shown in a number of venues: at the Tour Orion for A Wall of Sugar, at 6b in Saint-Denis for Dehors il y a la terre, à l’intérieur il y a la mer, at the Galerie du Crous for Each Day, and more recently at the Monnaie de Paris for En attendant (les mots). Through the Nest collective, the artists seek to build new spaces within existing locations. Their common approach is to engage with the history, architecture and specific context of these places. Each member of the collective approaches the notion of architecture with his or her own sensibility, integrating a poetic dimension.
