REMEMBRA reveals a sealed place: a visual and sound immersion into the memory of a forgotten heritage site
Installation, Exhibition. For Nuit Blanche 2026, the Chapelle Saint-Louis de la Salpêtrière is exceptionally opening Les Magasins, a space closed to the public since the 18th century. A long-locked door opens: for the first time, the public gains access to the resources of a little-known place, relegated to storage and separated from the chapel choir, carrying a silent, multilayered history. With REMEMBRA, Shana Rouaix takes over this space frozen in time, working from medical artifacts abandoned within it (1950s–1990s), which she reveals without alteration. Since February 2025, she has been developing an in situ work there based on these already-present elements — period furniture, laboratory objects, and hospital archives — in a three-dimensional installation that brings out their historical, sensory, and symbolic dimensions. Shana Rouaix, a scenographer and visual artist trained in architecture (Montpellier), performing arts (Sorbonne-Nouvelle), and scenography (Arts Décoratifs de Paris, 2022), explores the relationships between memory, objects, and places, transcending the spaces she inhabits through interventions that summon new forms of the sacred. Filippo Fabbri’s sound design activates the acoustic tensions by generating a pulse specific to the site. A composer, pianist, and engineer, he works with the relationships between sound, space, and perception, with a strong interest in immersive experiences. Through variations in intensity, from the almost imperceptible to impact, he brings out a physical presence of the place, between creaking sounds and resonance. Together, they offer an immersive experience at the boundary between installation and investigation, where hospital memory, scientific remains, and intimate narratives echo one another. REMEMBRA — between “remember” and “remembrer” — designates a gesture of recomposition, bringing together what has been fragmented. The project is part of a heritage enhancement initiative led by the Direction de la Culture et du Mécénat de l’AP-HP Sorbonne Université, with a continuation planned in 2027 in a second choreographic chapter in collaboration with Eve Tardy. In partnership with the Direction de la Culture et du Mécénat AP-HP Sorbonne Université, ADAGP, Université Paris-Saclay. With support from Stephen Ellis, Bénédicte Comet, and the company Co-S.
Source: paris.fr — photo: © Shana Rouaix, REMEMBRA, view of the installation "Société de tubes", 2026, Les Magasins, Chapelle Saint-Louis, Salpêtrière