Jean-Marc Bustamante Builds a Home for His 'Fourth Daughter'

By Simon Bainbridge

When the architect Charles Zana first entered the former Église Sainte-Croix in Arles, he felt something “sacred” had survived – even if little else of its original character remained.

Since its deconsecration during the French Revolution, the 12th-century church has passed through several incarnations, latterly operating as a furniture store and, for a time, a hotel. Its interior had been repeatedly subdivided and altered.

“There was not one regular floor; everything was destroyed,” Zana tells The Art Journal. His response was deliberately restrained. Old stone walls and arches remain visible alongside contemporary interventions. “We began the very humble work of trying to get back the sacred feeling of this place,” he says. “Everything that we have done is visible: we didn’t hide the destruction, we didn’t hide the electricity.”

The restored church is now the home of Fonds Bustamante, an institution dedicated to the work of the artist Jean-Marc Bustamante, a noted artist in his native France. He represented France at the São Paulo Biennale in 1994 and the Venice Biennale in 2003, and was director of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris for four years.

The new space opened in conjunction with the ongoing Les Rencontres photography festival. Its creation brings Bustamante back to the city that hosted one of his first exhibitions at the Musée Réattu, during an early edition of the festival in 1973, when he was studying in Provence with Denis Brihat, best known for his ‘photographic paintings’.

Now 74, Bustamante describes the Fonds as “the project for the end of my life”. It is intended to preserve his works, books and archives, and may support the creation of a catalogue raisonné. But it will also present exhibitions, classes, performances and seminars involving other artists and disciplines.