1The exhibition
Through the lens of contemporary art and informed by scientific research, Origins. Artists perspectives on racism and discrimination explores one of the most powerful and enduring drivers of discrimination in our societies. Whether real or perceived, “origin” remains a source of exclusion and stigmatization in everyday life. Often subtle and overlooked, this reality nonetheless shapes both individual lives and collective trajectories from an early age.
Legende
Women’s Boxing, series, 2000. Collection of the French National Centre for Visual Arts.
Credit
© Jane Evelyn Atwood
What place do racism and discrimination hold in contemporary society ? And how can we share the same world without erasing our differences ?
Equality is a founding principle of our societies, but there are still obstacles in place when it comes to ensuring access to housing, education, employment or rights for all people, whatever their real or supposed origins. These situations are not simply indicative of individual prejudice. They also result from mechanisms that are established in the way institutions operate. This is what we call structural or systemic racism, and it is essential to decipher it to understand the processes that go beyond the conscious acts of certain people. These thought patterns determine pathways and sometimes have an irreversible effect on lives.
The enduring legacies of the colonial order
These structural mechanisms are rooted in extended history. From the 15th century, slavery and colonisation established persistent hierarchies between peoples, reinforced in the 18th and 19th centuries by pseudo-scientific theories classifying humanity into “races”. Palais de la Porte Dorée, built for the Colonial Exposition of 1931, bears the trace of this history. It is the bricks and mortar embodiment of the narratives used to justify the control and exploitation of colonised countries and populations. Although discredited today, these ways of thinking still have effects on our contemporary societies.
Between art and science : perspectives on racism and discrimination
The exhibition “Origins. Artists’ perspectives on racism and discrimination” establishes a dialogue between scientific research into discrimination drawn mainly from the European research project UNDETERRED, and artistic works or practices. It offers several points of access to understand how discrimination is part of social organisation, to analyse the structures that produce it, and to imagine other ways to live together in our world. Where scientific data enlightens the systemic thought patterns in the production and reproduction of discrimination, art questions how views are constructed.
Through stories that link memory and individual and collective struggles, the exhibition “Origins” opens a space in which our differences do not separate us, but become what makes it possible and desirable to make a world together.
The UNDETERRED Project
The European research project UNDETERRED, coordinated by the University of Bordeaux, addresses a central question facing contemporary societies: why do discrimination and inequality persist in a lasting and structured way despite existing legal frameworks ? By shedding light on the institutional mechanisms, sometimes invisible or unintended, that generate and reproduce inequalities in the fields of employment, healthcare, education, and housing, the project aims to strengthen efforts to combat systemic discrimination across Europe and Canada in a concrete and effective manner.Through the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data, researchers examine the everyday experiences of young adults aged 18 to 35 with immigrant backgrounds, descendants of immigrants, or members of European national minorities, particularly Roma populations.
Exhibition Curators
Farah Clémentine Dramani-Issifou is a researcher and exhibition curator. A doctoral candidate at Aix-Marseille University (LESA), she is completing a dissertation on the decolonization of regimes of visibility in the exhibition of African presences in art and cinema (1984–2026). Her research focuses on contemporary politics of visibility, heritage circulations, and situated epistemologies. She develops a transdisciplinary approach that brings together archives, memory, and contemporary creation. As Chair of the Selection Committee for the MacMillan-Stewart Fellowship at Harvard’s Film Study Center, she has notably co-curated the exhibitions Afrotropes: Imaginaries and Movement (Dakar, 2024), Tofodji: In the Footsteps of the Ancestors (Porto-Novo, 2022), and A Family Affair (Un.e Air.e de Famille, Saint-Denis, 2021). She is currently editing Repairing the Visible: Cinémathèque Afrique—Legacies, Histories, and Futures of a Cinematic Heritage between France and the African Continent (Institut français / Marest Éditeur, 2026). She lives and works between Paris and Dakar.
Olivier Bedoin is an Exhibition Officer at the National Museum of the History of Immigration. Holding degrees in History, Political Science, and Cultural Heritage Management from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, he has contributed to the preparation of exhibitions at the Carnavalet Museum – History of Paris. He has also been involved in the development of the permanent exhibition of the National Museum of the History of Immigration, as well as the exhibitions Olympism : A History of the World and Migrations & Climate, presented at the Palais de la Porte Dorée in 2025–2026.
Scientific advisory board
Patrick Simon is a socio-demographer and Research Director at the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), where he heads the research unit International Migration and Minorities. His work focuses on interethnic relations and discrimination in multicultural societies, statistical classifications of ethnoracial diversity, and the trajectories and practices of immigrants and their descendants. At INED, he co-directs the Trajectories and Origins survey, a major research project examining population diversity in France. He also coordinates the Standing Committee on Race and Discrimination (RACED) within the European migration research network IMISCOE.
Jacques Toubon served as a member of both the French National Assembly and the European Parliament. He was Mayor of Paris’s 13th arrondissement from 1983 to 2001, Minister of Culture from 1993 to 1995, and Minister of Justice (Garde des Sceaux) from 1995 to 1997. He chaired the Advisory Council of the National Museum of the History of Immigration and served as France’s Defender of Rights from 2014 to 2020. He is currently a lawyer at the Paris Bar.
Exhibition Design
- Exhibition Design : Atelier Maciej Fiszer
- Graphic Design : CL Design
- Lighting Design : Atelier Conception Lumière
With the support of
