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London-based French artist Ève Chabanon creates situations that grow from engagement with institutional structures. Through performance, writing and objects, Chabanon initiates projects that often involve local communities and develop out of her engagement with grassroots collectives or groups.

Initiated by Chabanon, Anti-Social Social Club: Episode One, The Chamber of the Dispossessed was a gathering of forty people in the council chamber at the town hall of Barking and Dagenham, a borough of outer East London. For one evening, this highly symbolic site, usually closed to the public, welcomed local and non-local residents, members of the Women’s Institute, students form the local Eastbury Community School, artists, a poet and a local councillor. Chabanon says “the aim of Anti-Social Social Club was to create a fictional temporary coalition - that of the dispossessed - and to show the fragility of the democratic apparatus through a performative debate”.

The Surplus of the Non-Producer stems from Chabanon’s observation that craftspeople, artists and creative producers living in a situation of exile face multiple obstacles in practicing their trade. These difficulties include accessing raw materials, tools and workshops; the loss of the ability to present traces of past work; and the absence of wider professional networks and community support. An investigation into the relationship between practice, identity and systemic failures, the project aims to initiate a conversation, to reinvest in the ethics of the local and to create possibilities as well as value. The Surplus of the Non-Producer was part of The Centre Cannot Hold, a group exhibition that took place at Lafayette Anticipations in Paris in 2018. The first year of the project was dedicated to building a network of Paris-based charity organisations, lawyers, activists and thinkers who are currently advocating for the social, legal, and professional enhancement and survival of exiled populations, especially within the arts and crafts sector in France.

Ève Chabanon studied at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (HEAR) in Strasbourg (France), the University of Paris IV Sorbonne, and at Open School East, London. Chabanon is Laureate of 9th edition of Prix Science Po (Paris). Her work have been recently shown at Lafayette Anticipations (Paris), FRAC Grand-Large-Hauts-de-France (Dunkerque), D.O.C (Paris), Diep-Haven Festival, ONCA Gallery (Brighton), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), and the South London Gallery.

Chabanon’s residency and travel have been supported by The French Embassy in New Zealand.