Fourteen student artists from the Fresco & Art in Context program at Beaux-Arts de Paris created works specifically designed for the Trinitaires Church in Metz, drawing inspiration from their discovery of the forests on the outskirts of the city.
An invitation from Viviane Zenner (Galerie des Jours de Lune) in partnership with the city of Metz.
More than 2,000 years ago, Metz was known as Divodurum Mediomatricorum, “the divine enclosure between two rivers,” located in the heart of the territory of the Celtic Mediomatrici tribe. Under the growing influence of Rome, the city gradually broadened its spiritual horizons. The inhabitants adopted a profusion of new cults, welcoming goddesses from distant lands.
In the heart of the city, the Trinitaires church, built in its current form in the 18th century, has had several lives and seems to be in a state of eternal transformation. The transition period of the contemporary world, in which the spiritual landscape is being redrawn, this “pivotal age” according to philosopher Karl Jaspers, has led the artist-students of the “Fresco & Art in Context” program at Beaux-Arts de Paris to explore the very notion of worship and the nature of the potential rites of tomorrow.
They are taking over the Trinitaires for a final contemporary art exhibition, drawing inspiration in particular from their discovery of the Meuse forest a few dozen kilometers from Metz. The church is thus linked to the forest, at the edge of the woods, dark and deep, giving way to the imagination of darkness: it serves as a boundary between the real world and the invented world. Searching through the beliefs and practices of the past, proven or imagined, to imagine the cults of the future, to offer speculative thinking, an attentive, meditative experience of the place.
The program is supported by the Gecina Foundation, Vedettes de Paris, Apes/Action Logement group, RM Yachts, and Compagnie de Phalsbourg.
Participating students/artists: Ash, Mehdi Babaei, Helena Heras, Ruoxi Jin, Bahar Kocabey, Jade Maignan, Baptiste Marfaing, Sarah Melloul, Amine Merhoum, Lou Olmos Arsenne, Héloïse Sailly, François Toison, Mehdi Shineshen, Wiktoria Wojciechowska
Guest artists/teachers: Bertrand Planes and Charlotte Imbault
Divine Orée
Exhibition from September 17 to October 26, 2025
Église des Trinitaires
1 rue des Trinitaires, 57000, Metz
Free admission from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
