EventsEngadin Art Talks x Lafayette Anticipations — Conférences / Talks
Event
Engadin Art Talks x Lafayette Anticipations
Conférences / Talks
In about 2 months: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Talks / Conference • 21 October 2025, 2–6 PM
Lafayette Anticipations will host a satellite event by Engadin Art Talks (E.A.T.), the international platform for cultural exchange founded in 2010 by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Cristina Bechtler. This year’s gathering will feature artist Meriem Bennani, curators Elsa Coustou, Camille Morineau, Roya Sachs and Hans Ulrich Obrist, architect Lina Ghotmeh, landscape architect Bas Smets, and Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou.
Taking place on Tuesday 21 October 2025, from 2 to 6 PM, this public event — part of the ongoing exploration of the theme Form & Impact — invites artists, architects, and researchers to reflect on a central question: how does form become a vehicle for impact? E.A.T. is a non-profit foundation based in Switzerland, dedicated to fostering dialogue across disciplines. The platform brings together artists, thinkers, scientists, and curators to explore the social role of art through conversations that are as critical as they are generative. Each year, in the unique setting of Zuoz, in the Engadin valley, E.A.T. organises a programme of presentations, dialogues, and performances that foster cross- disciplinary exchange, critical thinking, and the sharing of perspectives. Since its inception, more than 350 international participants have contributed to the platform — including figures such as Ai Weiwei, Etel Adnan, Simone Fattal, Camille Henrot, (LA)HORDE, Théo Casciani, Anna-Alix Koffi, Chris Dercon, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Hélène Cixous.
But E.A.T. is not confined to its alpine setting. Throughout the year, it expands its reach through satellite events in cities such as Paris and London, in collaboration with institutions like Lafayette Anticipations and the Serpentine Galleries. These gatherings carry the spirit of Zuoz into new cultural and urban contexts, fostering exchange on a broader scale. In addition, E.A.T. maintains an extensive online archive on its website, where all contributions are freely accessible — offering a growing resource for reflection, research, and inspiration.
The name E.A.T. loosely echoes the historical movement Experiments in Art and Technology, which brought artists and engineers together in pioneering collaborations. But this platform goes beyond disciplinary intersections — it is fundamentally about people: practitioners from diverse fields who come together to collaborate, exchange, and build lasting networks.
Inspired by the Crystal Chain — a utopian correspondence network of architects and artists initiated by Bruno Taut in 1919 — E.A.T. embraces a way of thinking that is collective, experimental, and open-ended. Far from traditional academic or conference formats, it functions as a living space: a place where form becomes action, and art opens up new perspectives on social transformation.
The gathering at Lafayette Anticipations brings together leading voices from the artistic and architectural fields to exchange ideas and spark new conversations. As part of this year’s exploration of Form & Impact, the event continues to reflect on the interplay between structure and influence in artistic and architectural practices. How does impact take shape? How do form and engagement intersect to create meaningful change? These questions serve as a starting point for a dynamic discussion among the invited experts.
Biographies
Meriem Bennani
Meriem Bennani is an artist who makes groundbreaking video installations and sculptures informed by the circulation of global cultures online. Frequently rooted in Moroccan life off and online, her work speaks to the hybrid nature of contemporary cultural flows. Bennani combines elements of reality television, documentary film, telenovela, music videos, science fiction, and animated cartoons in her videos. She received a 2025 Art Basel Award in the Emerging Artist category. Her upcoming solo exhibition at Lafayette Anticipations will be on view at the time of this event.
Laurent Le Bon
Laurent Le Bon is a curator and president of the Centre Pompidou in Paris. He previously served as president of the Musée national Picasso-Paris (2014–2021) and director of Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010–2014). From 2000 to 2010 he was curator at the Musée national d’Art Moderne, where he organised major exhibitions including Dada (2005) and Jeff Koons Versailles (2008). He has curated over fifty exhibitions, among them Jardins (2017), Dioramas (2017), and Picasso. Blue and Rose (2018).
Elsa Coustou
Elsa Coustou is a curator at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris, where she curated solo exhibitions with Mark Leckey, Pol Taburet, Lina Lapelytè, and Meriem Bennani (forthcoming). From 2016 to 2021 she worked on the contemporary programme and acquisitions at Tate Britain in London, where she curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions, commissions and collection displays. With a focus on emerging British art, she worked on the development of the Art Now series and co-curated the 2018 Turner Prize.
Lina Ghotmeh
Lina Ghotmeh is an award-winning architect and founder of the internationally acclaimed firm Lina Ghotmeh — Architecture. Her work blends traditional craftsmanship with innovation, shaping a forward-thinking, ecological, and inclusive approach to architecture. She was selected to redesign the Western Range galleries of the British Museum. Her work has earned many honours including the 2023 Great Arab Minds Award and the 2020 Schelling Architecture Award, among others.
Camille Morineau
Camille Morineau is a heritage curator and art historian specialising in women artists. Since 2014, she is the co-founder and Executive Director at AWARE. She curated numerous exhibitions, among which are Niki de Saint Phalle (2014) at RMN — Grand Palais and elles@centrepompidou (2009–2011), dedicated solely to female artists from the collections of the Musée National d’Art Moderne. In 2022, she co-curated the exhibition Pionnières with Lucia Pesapane at the Musée du Luxembourg.
Bas Smets
Bas Smets is a visionary landscape architect whose work seamlessly blends engineering, architecture, and landscape design. His multidisciplinary background has shaped his unique approach to creating innovative and sustainable urban spaces. Smets founded his firm in 2007 in Brussels which has since grown to a team of 30 collaborators. In 2022, his firm won the prestigious competition for the redesign of the area surrounding Notre-Dame in Paris, which will open to the public in the fall of 2025.
Roya Sachs
Roya Sachs is a London-based curator and artistic director, and co-founder of TRIADIC, a creative house for cross-disciplinary, experience-based art. From 2016 to 2019 she was curator of the Lever House Art Collection in New York, and in 2022 co-founded FORMAT festival in Arkansas with Live Nation. Recent projects include Mondegreen Festival (2024) for Phish and a curatorial residency at The Art House in Mumbai’s Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center (since 2022). She also serves on the Board of Directors of Performa and the Advisory Board of AucArt.
Hans Ulrich
Obrist Hans Ulrich Obrist is a renowned curator and art historian. He is the artistic director of the Serpentine in London, part of the curatorial team of E.A.T. and senior advisor at LUMA Arles. Prior to this, he was the curator of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Since his first show World Soup (The Kitchen Show) in 1991, he has curated more than 350 exhibitions, including recent exhibitions at Triennale Milano (2020), Centre Pompidou Metz (2023) and Julia Stoschek Collection Dusseldorf (2022).
Tuesday 21 October 2025 • 2:00 — 6:00 PM — Lafayette Anticipations 9 rue du Plâtre, 75004 Paris Metro: Hôtel-de-Ville / Rambuteau
Instagram: @engadinarttalks
Opening hours
Wednesday – Sunday, 11 AM – 7 PM
Admission fee
19 euros – Tuesday 21 October 2025 – From 2pm to 6pm
The artists
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Meriem Bennani
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Bas Smets
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Lina Ghotmeh