How The Community is Building a New Arts Ecosystem in Paris

The Community opened its first space in an old barber shop in Paris in 2016. Deciding to stay true to the space’s history and personality, the Finnish art collective left the walls as it found them: baby pink and peeling away in places to reveal drywall. What ensued was a series of guerilla-style exhibitions and events including installations, fashion shows and parties (sometimes concurrently), filling a gap in Paris’s underground art scene. 

Founders Tuukka Laurila and Sini Rinne-Kanto characterize the early days of The Community as being much like a playground: a space for creatives of all disciplines to experiment; a world where fashion, art, music and publishing fused. The Community has since put on well over 50 shows, and directed major exhibitions that enriched the legacies of Tom of Finland and Tove Jansson.  

A new edition of The Community’s ‘Salon,’ which opened on Thursday, took the collective’s core values of collaboration, dialogue and multidisciplinary exploration, and adapted them to a grander scale. Challenging the codes of a traditional art fair format, the Salon exhibits over 50 art galleries and not-for-profit art spaces, alongside live performances and a book fair in a former crystal factory. 

What inspired you to open an artist-collective-run art center in Paris?

TUUKKA LAURILA Today I was reading this article about [the] Martine Syms retrospective. [Syms] said that she got into arts because she interned at this gallery/shop in LA called Ooga Booga. That place was also the reason The Community started. I was there for the opening of Susan Cianciolo’s exhibition in 2015. There [were] these extremely inspiring artists who were also quite famous. There was a shop where these young kids from LA [were selling] self-printed T-shirts or zines. They were all a part of the same universe. I was thinking, why doesn’t this exist in Paris?

Sini, me and the rest set out on this mission that we should open a physical space where people can come together. It was a very pure gesture in the beginning: showing artists that are not present in Paris, [or] not considered artists by traditional French vocabulary. They went to fashion school or design school, or they were writers or musicians. For us, they should be all in dialogue.

SINI RINNE-KANTO There was a similar energy that was driving us. The 2010s in Paris felt very conservative, it didn’t feel very international. [It was] avant-garde, as a gesture, to start your own space and [not] care about the rules.

Did you consider The Community’s aesthetic identity as an art practice in itself at that time? 

TL Absolutely. It was a process. We weren’t trying to be something that we knew, we were doing what we could. There were eight people coming from very different professional backgrounds and everyone contributed. It [took on] its own life that became The Community. We also [had] very limited resources. Everything was very DIY. Everything was recycled and upcycled.

SR-K At the start of The Community, the majority of the members weren’t artists per se. But there was this mentality of doing things together in a very democratic way. We made collective pieces at the beginning. [The first piece] that was shown in the first exhibition was a shower curtain, [where we had printed] all of the name suggestions for The Community. We had some really experimental installation processes that [were] like a playground. That was the defining metaphor – a playground – within the first years. When [we did] an installation, everybody contributed. It was really going against the white cube aesthetic, against “defined roles.” It was all about the craftiness of working with your hands.

What drove the idea of putting on an art fair in Paris?

TL When we decided to move out from the Château d’Eau space, we wanted to move out of Paris to refresh the way that people perceived us. In this process, we met these people that had this hotel called the Normandy in the Rue Saint-Honoré. They said, “Would you like to organize an exhibition here?” We [wanted to] give this space to others as well, and together make something bigger than we could do [separately].

The format of an art fair is something we know well and appreciate from an industry point of view. But how could it be rethought? It started as an experimentation. There was music, performances, readings, art collectors and book collectors, non-profits, artists run spaces… It was this beautiful universe that came together. After the second edition we got this space [in Pantin], so we put the project on hold. We thought, ‘How do we navigate this situation to do this fair?’ [To] start to mix commercial galleries and non-profits, we needed to find a new model.

What differentiates the Salon from other fairs?

SR-K There is a strong emphasis on non-profit spaces and their visibility. So I think that makes it a bit more experimental, in terms of programming as well. I think that’s the original spirit of the salon.

 TL I think it serves a purpose for different audiences. The traditional art fair is a commercial exercise, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But then a lot of decisions of how an art fair is organized are made purely based on how the collectors are entertained, received and communicated. We feel that, especially in this new edition with NADA [New Art Dealer’s Alliance, a not-for-profit collective of galleries and art professionals which hosts programming and fairs in New York and Miami], you can satisfy the collectors, without compromising the experience for others. It’s more of an exhibition. 

SR-K And the fair is free to visit.

All three editions of the Salon have taken place in unconventional locations. What is the importance of space to you and how has it shaped the Salon?

SR-K I remember a friend described [the first two editions of the Salon] as a haunted house, and I like that description. That you would not know what to expect when you walk in the corridor. [We are] essentially creating something surprising for the visitors. I think also the process and aesthetics [are] related to the spaces, and exploring the possibilities within.

The new venue of the Salon is a former warehouse of Baccarat. It’s a very vast space but it feels condensed in a good way. So maybe there will be a new definition for this one, instead of the haunted house.

TL [When] you step into a white cube gallery, the experience might be limited to just the work, whereas for us, it’s about this total experience, and that’s especially the case for Salon de Normandy: it was about getting lost literally in the building, because there was so much space, and something to discover.

By developing these new models for experiencing art, it’s clear you’re initiating a shift. What kind of art world do you feel like you’re creating?

SR-K Hopefully a universe that is based on dialogue. And collaboration – I think that’s one of the keywords that has been part of our DNA since the very beginning. It’s imagining a different kind of system or network of galleries, and the multidisciplinary element.

How did the NADA collaboration come to be?

TL The Salon was something that we looked back on so warmly, and we felt that we needed to do it again, but by ourselves we would be repeating the same procedure. We received requests from commercial galleries that wanted to be part of it, and we thought, ‘How can we mix this even more?’ By doing a fair that’s half commercial and half non-profit. 

NADA was the obvious choice because it’s a non-profit from New York that we always looked up to. A common artist friend made the introduction, and we sat down, and it was an immediate connection. That was February of 2023, and now it’s the first edition, and hopefully one of many to come.

It’s coming up to the eight year anniversary of The Community. What changes have you seen in the Paris art scene since you opened?

TL I think Paris is becoming more open. When we started, there was a division between the ‘Parisians’ and the international; I think this is already mixing up. Like Sini said earlier on the multidisciplinary point: contemporary art, fashion, design and music are all part of this cultural field, but they are much more in the same pool now. I think there’s a  bit more encouragement to start something new and do things differently.

SR-K I think it has become more attractive to international artists than it was nine years ago. [Now], there is a place for blue chip galleries, but there is [also a place] for more experimental artist-run spaces. We would go to openings in the Marais all the time. Now it’s really disparate. Paris is growing with the suburbs, it’s very exciting at the moment.

Who is your Mastermind?

TL The artist Susan Cianciolo inspired me with her first show that I saw at the Ooga Booga. This is a person that really has made her own path. Her practice starting as a fashion designer, and then transforming into a fine artist, the meditation, and her community; the way she collaborates with her daughter and the people around her, making food and creating these experiences… She has this aura that when you’re with her, you feel special. I think she’s very much a living mastermind to me.

SR-K For me it’s Tove Jansson. I think it was really an honor to work on the project [with her estate, the exhibition, Houses of Tove Jansson]. I recently [revisited] the project this summer because I visited the island again, when I was writing an article about [it], and I think there’s something so touching about the way she transformed her entire life into art. I think that’s a true artist. Never ending curiosity and humor. She was definitely a mastermind. 

The Salon runs from October 17 to 20 at 30 bis Rue de Paradis in Paris.