Escales at Galeries Lafayette Marseille Prado

Each set of fitting rooms, equipped with speakers, becomes a real musical stopover in the heart of the store, and is discovered in turn, such as the metaphor of a crossing of banks to banks around the Mediterranean. From Egypt, France, Greece, Lebanon and Morocco, five women composers are invited by Galeries Lafayette and gmem-CNCM-marseille to create new works, based on sound recordings made in a port city of their country of origin. Spaces of rare intimacy in the tumult of department stores, fitting rooms are a place conducive to the experimentation of sensitive works.

The Galeries Lafayette project is a societal project whose ambition is to ensure that creative energy, across all fields, reaches the widest possible audience. Our timeless “grands magasins” have consistently evolved in tandem with the culture of the times, embodying the spirit of the age in order to provide our customers with the best of what each era has to offer. In this, the Galeries Lafayette have always been accompanied by the greatest architects, designers, fashion designers and artists of their time. Their presence at our side, generation after generation, we have been able to nurture new structures and ideas which contribute to reinventing production and consumer modes.

By collaborating with gmem-CNCM-marseille, the Galeries Lafayette team once again associated with an expert prescriber of the territory, for the realization of a new project imagined for this new store in Marseille, whose course was also drawn around a stopover in Phocean city. Thoughts echoing with the surrounding ecosystem, the artistic installations unfold in connection with the place, the city, creating surprise and wonder for the visitors.

Habiba Effat: Sound artist and writer, born in 1991 in Egypt, lives and works in Cairo. With a BA from the American University in Cairo, she been editing for independent Egyptian journalism platform Mada Masr.

Kinda Hassan: Multimedia artist, born in 1984 in Beirut (Lebanon), works and lives in Paris. Kinda Hassan investigates the fields of video and sound.

Sara Kaddouri: Sound designer, born in 1991 in Fès (Morocco), works and lives in Casablanca. She campaigns for helping independent cinema and the diversification of the cinematographic industry in the Arab world and especially in Morocco.

Cécile Le Prado: Music composer, born in 1956 in France, lives and works in Marseille. After studying electroacoustic music, Cécile Le Prado became interested in soundscape, and in the multiple spaces of listening submitted to a ‘listening walker’.

Esthir Lemi: Artist and music composer, born in 1975 in Greece. She lives and works in Athens. Esthir Lemi works on the process of art and its reality, as well as on the complementarity of the artistic shapes and the way in which technology may interfere.