Focus Collection

The collections form the beating heart of Les Abattoirs, energized by exchanges between artists, audiences, and the museum-Frac teams. Divided between the museum collection and the Frac (Regional Contemporary Art Fund) collection, they now include more than 3,500 works by over 1,200 artists. Each year, new acquisitions are added, reflecting the vitality of modern and contemporary creation. This exhibition is an opportunity to discover for the first time a selection of works acquired between 2020 and 2025 from twelve female artists of different generations, aesthetics, and backgrounds.

Les Abattoirs' acquisition policy is part of a complex history of collections. The criteria governing the choice of works have evolved throughout the institution's history, with each new director adding their own touch to a common foundation. Over the last ten years, a strong focus has emerged: the quest for greater representation of female artists. While in 2015, 17% of the Abattoirs' collections were by women artists, this figure rose to 24% in 2025. Although parity remains a distant goal, these acquisitions represent progress towards a greater presence of women in exhibitions and collections, at a time when women account for 60% of art school students and almost half of all working artists.

Seeking this representativeness implies a more global shift in perspective, taking into account the multiple cultural, social, geographical, and chronological expressions that shape artistic production. It is a question of both restoring balance and tracing the contours of other art histories, moving away from a monolithic and essentially male canon to open up to a plurality of narratives that reflect the diversity of our current societies and help shape our futures. Each of the works in this exhibition sketches new horizons, opening up to plural artistic scenes (Occitan scene, ultra-marine scene, Spanish-speaking world) and a variety of media, combining painting and sculpture with so-called artisanal practices such as ceramics and textiles.

Several of the artists featured are entering French public collections for the first time: an entry into a shared body of work that the teams at Les Abattoirs are dedicated to sharing. Beyond the exhibition, it is thanks to careful groundwork that these stories flourish, through a multitude of daily acts of preservation and promotion of the works. From conservation to mediation, documentation, management, and communication, this capsule collection is also an opportunity to discover the mechanisms of the collective work accomplished behind the scenes.

With works by Maty Biyaenda, Cathryn Boch, Alison Flora, Ángela García Codoñer, Nủria Güell, Dorothy Iannone, Nathalie Leroy-Fiévée, Mirka Lugosi, Françoise Maisongrande, Jeanne Vicérial, Juliette VanWaterloo, and Elsa Werth.