RAINY GU — IN RESIDENCE September 2026
Recent Exhibition
A residency takes shape through what happens within it — works in progress, conversations, encounters, and exhibitions.
Discover recent exhibitions and moments from artists at Montmartre Residency.
Artists in MR
Montmartre Residency
A growing community of artists, writers and curators who have lived, worked and exhibited through Montmartre Residency
Rainy Gu
2026.09 – 2026.10 · Singapore / China
Visual Artist · Painting
Born in Chongqing, China and currently based in Singapore, Rainy Gu Xia is a visual artist whose ongoing project Field Traces explores how the body registers social structures, spatial constraints, and psychological tension. Moving away from conventional portraiture, her paintings bring bodies, architecture, furniture, and surrounding environments into shared psychological fields through compressed spaces, translucent layers, restless lines, and overlapping forms. Through processes of layering, scraping, and reconstruction, Gu Xia approaches the body not as a passive site of constraint, but as a space of endurance, resistance, and renewed visual agency.
Grace Gu (Gu Guangcan)
2026.09 – 2026.10 · Chongqing
China Writer · Poet · Scholar
Grace Gu (Gu Guangcan, pen name Gu Xiaowei) is a writer, poet and scholar whose practice moves between literature, human geography, field research and the study of place. Born in a small market town along the Jialing River in Chongqing, she later received her doctorate from Chiba University in Japan. Through years of fieldwork, diaries, photography, drawing and writing, place has gradually become central to her literary practice—not merely as the setting of a story, but as a living field in which memory, body, emotion, myth and destiny emerge together. Her writing moves between rural reality and mythic imagination, exploring the relationships between people and land, home and distance, memory and transformation.
Young Joo Lee
2026 upcoming
South Korean artist based in Paris.
Young Joo Lee
2026.08 · Paris, France
Invited Artist · Multidisciplinary Artist
Young Joo Lee is a South Korean-born artist based in Paris. Shaped by her experiences as an immigrant in Germany, the United States, Canada and France, her practice explores how human identities and worldviews are formed through biology and culture. Informed by science fiction and feminism, Lee constructs speculative narratives across drawing, painting, sculpture, video, performance, research and installation. Her work has been presented internationally, including at the Curitiba Biennial, The Drawing Center, MMCA Korea, SIGGRAPH Asia, Seoul Museum of Art and Cité internationale des arts. She is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD through SACRe at ENS–PSL in Paris.
Wu Chen
2026.07 · London, UK
Multidisciplinary Artist
Wu Chen is a London-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans drawing, installation, writing, digital media and other material forms. Working between dreams, memory and everyday reality, her practice unfolds through liminal states where perception becomes unstable and movement remains suspended. Having lived across different countries and cultures, Wu has developed a lasting sensitivity to transition, becoming and the uncertain boundaries between inner and outer worlds. Her work opens thresholds between becoming and arrival, where transformation remains perpetually unfinished. Wu received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MA from the Royal College of Art in London.
Yuanchi Jiang
2026.05 – 2026.06 · Grenoble, France Painter
Yuanchi Jiang is a Chinese painter based in Grenoble, France. Through painting, observation and contemplation, his practice explores the emotional and perceptual responses evoked by a vast and mysterious nature that precedes human presence. Drawing on fragments collected from landscapes, his works unfold as traces of inner journeys, where memory, sensation and imagination converge. Working through an intuitive and gestural process, Jiang transforms elements of the visible world into open images suspended between light and darkness. Brushstrokes accumulate, disperse and collide, allowing chance to shape the surface and preserving the painting in a state of perpetual becoming rather than fixed completion.
Inside Montmartre Residency
Three levels. One artistic environment.
Located in the heart of Montmartre, our three-level residency brings together private accommodation, creative studios, spaces for dialogue and a contemporary art gallery.
More than a place to stay, Montmartre Residency offers artists an environment in which to live, create, exchange ideas and present their work in Paris.
Curatorial Accompaniment — A Personal Dialogue
Every artist. Every project. A unique conversation.
At Montmartre Residency, we believe that every artistic practice deserves individual attention and meaningful dialogue.
Through one-to-one curatorial accompaniment, we work closely with each resident artist to explore their artistic vision, discuss their projects and develop an exhibition concept that reflects their unique practice.
From the first conversations to the final presentation, we offer personalized curatorial guidance, exhibition planning and a critical perspective on the artist’s work.
Each residency also becomes part of a living archive. Through documentation, critical writing and the presentation of their work, we seek to preserve the artistic journey of every resident beyond the exhibition itself.
More than an exhibition, we offer artists an opportunity to develop their ideas, deepen their practice and leave a lasting trace of their creative journey in Paris.
Atelier — Where Art History Lives On
An artistic legacy in the heart of Montmartre.
Located in the historic heart of Montmartre, our atelier was once a working space for the Russian painters Ilya Repin and Vassily Polenov, who created here between 1873 and 1874.
More than 150 years later, artistic creation continues within these same walls.
Our studios offer resident artists the freedom to develop their practice at their own pace, surrounded by the rich artistic heritage and vibrant cultural life of Paris.
With visitors regularly stopping outside the atelier, this historic space remains part of Montmartre’s living artistic landscape — where the past meets contemporary creation, and new artistic encounters unfold.
We invite artists to continue writing their own artistic stories within these historic walls.
Accommodation — Living in the Heart of Montmartre
Located directly above Galerie Atelier Véron, in the cultural heart of Montmartre, our accommodation offers artists a comfortable and welcoming home in Paris.
Each artist enjoys a private bedroom, with access to shared living spaces including a fully equipped kitchen, bathroom, living room and washing machine.
With creative studios just steps away, artists are free to follow their own rhythm, moving naturally between work, reflection and rest.
More than a place to stay, it is an invitation to experience Montmartre from within — where everyday life, artistic creation and meaningful encounters come together.
Atelier Véron — Galerie d’Art
Montmartre, Paris
Atelier Véron is not simply a gallery in the traditional sense.
It is an artistic space in Montmartre where studio practice, exhibition and everyday life intersect. Artists come here not only to create, but to enter a network of relationships, perspectives and dialogues at the heart of the Montmartre artistic context.
Here, creation becomes visible. It circulates, transforms and finds its place.
“We are not simply offering a space.
We are creating an entry point into the narratives and structures of the Western art world.
For many artists, the work exists, yet its narrative remains absent; practices are already taking place, yet they remain underrepresented within Western art contexts.
What we are building is therefore not simply an invitation to come to Paris. From Montmartre — a historic and living centre of artistic production — we open a field in which artists can enter, encounter, articulate and position their practices.
Here, artists do not only create.
They build connections, develop their own language, become visible, and leave a record.
Through Montmartre Residency, we hope to expand the presence, visibility and place of artists within the narratives of Western art.
Wanrong SONG
Founder & Curator, Montmartre Residency
Founder, Maison de Kaoshan
OPEN CALL 2027-2028
Applications are now open.
Deadline · March 3，2027
VOICES
“A deeply valuable experience—not only for the work itself, but for the feeling of becoming part of Montmartre, breathing and resonating with it.”
Jiang Yuanchi Resident Artist · 2026
“I hope that when an artist leaves, they take with them a kind of catalyst—something created during the residency through their encounter with Montmartre. Its effects may not yet be visible, but perhaps one day it will react with a new place, a new encounter, or a new work.”
Jiang Yuanchi Resident Artist · 2026