Episode 3 : Thresholds
The Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg is pleased to announce the third episode of its offsite event series Saisons, taking place at the historic Espace Pertuis. For the first time, Saisons manifests in the form of an exhibition, bringing together Fribourg artists Maël Dupraz Nayak and Jordan Selophane in a presentation of newly conceived works. We warmly invite you to the opening on October 17, 2026, from 6pm! Drinks and snacks will be served.
Saisons is a series of offsite events organized by the Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg. It is conceived as an invitation to audiences, artists, and cultural actors who contribute to the art scene in Fribourg from both near and far. Developed each time within and in response to a unique site in Fribourg, Saisons seeks to create a space for temporary communities arising from the interactions between the people present, the artworks, and the spaces.
The Espace Pertuis is a deconsecrated chapel built into the rock in Fribourg’s medieval lower town. Throughout its history, it has been used by different communities. Initially, it served as a Masonic lodge (1877–1885), and subsequently as a chapel of a Franciscan convent of nuns (1888–1973). After a period of vacancy, it was deconsecrated in 1987 and converted into an art gallery and cultural centre. Until 2003, the Fribourg-based artists’ collective Groupe Mouvement regularly organized exhibitions in the space. For this unique site, Maël Dupraz Nayak and Jordan Selophane develop new works that engage with its multilayered history, its embedded beliefs, and its material remnants, examining how these structures have evolved and transformed over the centuries through the communities that inhabited them.
Maël Dupraz Nayak questions the belief systems of Western culture, which are at times shaped by dualistic modes of thought and are particularly reflected in the Catholic tradition, which plays an important cultural role in Fribourg. Text functions as a thread running through his work – as a means of making visible the power structures and dominant narratives that shape our contemporary imaginaries and manifest themselves in certain everyday objects. In the Espace Pertuis, an accumulation of votive candles forms words that bring the normative dimension of certain religious beliefs into focus, rendering it almost grotesque. The artificiality of the plastic candles, their burning flames simulated by LEDs, alters the character of the votive objects, as if the imperatives they evoke were held at a distance and emptied of their substance.
Jordan Selophane continues the exploration of our culturally and contextually shaped relationship to objects by relocating museum display cases to the context of the Espace Pertuis. Her installative and sculptural practice focuses on ornament, urban landscapes, and architectural forms, which bear witness to the multiple historical layers and communities that shape them. Selophane’s approach for the Espace Pertuis echoes the practice of the Franciscan sisters, who incorporated, reused, and integrated certain material elements of the Masonic lodge into their own cultural practice: In a similar way, the artist subverts the original function of the display cases, which are usually intended for the presentation, storage and protection of objects, making them an integral part of her works. By shifting their function and context, the objects and forms on display acquire new meaning. In this way, the artist questions how the value, meaning, and symbolism of things change across the different periods, contexts, and cultures in which they are embedded.
The exhibition at Espace Pertuis is open from October 18 to 20, 2026, from 12pm to 6pm.
Information
Kunsthalle Friart Fribourg
Petites-Rames 22
1701 Fribourg
Dates and timetable
From 18 to 20 Oct 2026
Every day
12:00 - 18:00
Espace Pertuis
Rue de la Grand-Fontaine 36
1700 Fribourg
