Celebrating Resistance and Imagination Through Art
From December 5 to 7, Les Urbaines returns with a powerful new edition that reflects today’s pressing cultural and political currents. Through an eclectic mix of performance art, installations, and cross-disciplinary works, the festival transforms into a dynamic space where creativity rises in response to systemic inequalities, current global challenges, and reimagined collective futures.
Creative Works as Acts of Defiance
Les Urbaines is more than an art showcase—it’s a platform where experimental artistic expressions critically engage with the world around us. In a climate shaped by neofascism, extractivism, colonial power structures, and imperialist legacies, this edition embraces art as a form of political resistance. The featured works do not simply reflect reality—they challenge, disrupt, and transform it, turning artistic creation into a bold form of truth-telling and defiance.
A Poetic and Politically Charged 29th Edition
Every piece in the program carries the imprint of its social and political context. These are not passive observations, but intentional and nuanced interventions—crafted through poetic language, performative gestures, and sharp political insight. Together, they offer an urgent invitation to look closer, think differently, and feel more deeply.
Highlights from the Festival Lineup
Charlie Osborne — SHIP Sket & Pike — SCENE ONE… / SCENE TWO…
📍 Aula de la Concorde — December 7, 9:00 PM–9:30 PM
Charlie Osborne presents a genre-defying mix of concert, performance, and essay. With influences from pop culture, horror, and hyperreal aesthetics, Osborne crafts a spectacle that exposes contradictions between authenticity and performance—resulting in an eerie yet romantic experience that toys with discomfort and delight.
Ayoub-Jasmina Moumen — BPM: Body, Pills, Metamorphosis
📍 Arsenic — December 5 (9:15 PM–11:00 PM) / December 6 (9:00 PM–10:45 PM)
This emotionally raw performance transforms the body into a vessel of personal and collective memory. Drawing on the Tunisian stambali ritual, Ayoub-Jasmina Moumen explores themes of trans identity, addiction, and systemic violence. Merging ritual with manifesto, the performance becomes an act of resistance, healing, and symbolic offering.
Trigger warning: drug use, self-harm, transfeminicide, addiction.
PJ Horny — Personnage Principale
📍 Arsenic — December 5 & 6 (9:30 PM–10:15 PM) / December 7 (3:45 PM–4:30 PM)
Mixing stand-up, cabaret, and digital culture with a queer twist, PJ Horny delivers a witty and politically charged performance. Through humor and irony, this piece unpacks power structures and media-driven fantasies—blending entertainment with sharp social commentary.
Ghyzlène Boukaïla — Djebel al-Qāf — is it reachable?
📍 Espace Arlaud — December 6 (4:30 PM–5:00 PM) / December 7 (1:15 PM–1:45 PM)
In this evocative work, Ghyzlène Boukaïla blends documentary storytelling, speculative fiction, and Islamic mythology to follow a smuggler’s pursuit of a mythical invisible mountain. A poetic exploration of personal and political borders, the piece invites audiences to question what is seen, what is imagined, and what lies in between.
A Collective Exhibition of Living Memory
📍 Espace Arlaud — December 6 to 14
The group exhibition unfolds as an immersive, living archive. Featuring sculptures, video, installations, reinterpreted documents, and intimate narratives, it maps a constellation of lived experiences and imagined worlds. This exhibition is meant not just to be viewed, but to be inhabited—offering a sensory experience that traces the spirit of the festival itself.
