For one magical night, the capital is taken over by contemporary art. From Saturday, June 6 to Sunday, June 7, 2026, Paris lights up for the new edition of the Nuit Blanche, a must-attend cultural rendezvous that nudges the curious to rediscover the city in a completely new light. Among this year’s most enigmatic stops, the Mobilier National promises to leave a lasting impression by turning its famed courtyard of modern architecture into a mesmerizing vegetal and sonic theater.
For this night that feels outside time, the Mobilier national presents the transdisciplinary installation "ORA" in the Perret Courtyard. The concept? Open a poetic crack in the concrete to reconnect the place with its past. The site is, in fact, built on the former vanished gardens of the Manufacture des Gobelins, today buried beneath modernist architecture.
For those who haven’t yet discovered this unique venue in the 13th arrondissement, the Mobilier National is a genuine French institution. Tracing its roots to the Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, established under Louis XIV, its mission is to furnish the Republic’s grand sites (from the Élysée Palace to the ministries) and to restore rare pieces of furniture.
It's also an incredible hub for creativity, home to exceptional textile workshops (the Gobelins, Beauvais, and Savonnerie manufactories). Its main site, where the event takes place, is itself a heritage masterpiece: a reinforced-concrete building from the 1930s by acclaimed architect Auguste Perret, blending classic rigor with modernist flair.
The Cour Perret of the National Furniture is turned, for one night, into the theatre of an emergence. ORA (from the sources bord, bouches, prière, or lumière) is a transdisciplinary installation rooted in the site’s history: once the gardens of the Gobelins Manufactory, now buried beneath Auguste Perret’s modernist architecture.
The collective work, through a collaborative sonic and visual landscape, seeks to carve a fault in the concrete and exhume the buried plants to let them bloom at night.
At the heart of the courtyard, a vegetal sculpture is teased by the invocations of around a dozen visual artists, writers and musicians who share readings, songs and chants gathered as vocal notes lasting a few minutes. Visitors are invited to wander between listening clearings, in a shared vibration.
Whispers are spoken to the parcel itself, to its ghosts of fragile shoots and three-century-old trees. We breathe into it fictions and formulas, confidences and laments. The melodies cradle the ground and, at moments, seem to coax it to speak in return. They open passages to another possible present. They infuse matter and infect the mind. This is a dance of the in-between, lifting spores with a touch of magic.
Here we dream of a lost paradise, trans-vegetal, of a healing bloom that, through a constellation of polyphonies, summons hidden depths, a people of the in-between, and reveals buried voices. A shared space-time, where we all and this garden can still be united.
—
An night imagined by Alice Giudicenti and Manon Klein
Invocations:
Mathilde Fernandez
Phoebe Hadjimarkos-Clarke
Sara Mokrani
La Chica
Romain Noël & Low Lov
Sophie Seita
Morita Vargas
Laura Vazquez
Sound assembly:
Fallon Mayanja
Vegetal installation:
Domitille Basso for Thyrse - with the support of the Iota agency
Sound installation:
Paul Emilieu & Pikip Solar Speakers
Light installation:
Charlotte Galabru / Light Lab
Dates and Opening Time
From June 6, 2026 to June 7, 2026
Location
Mobilier National
42 Avenue des Gobelins
75013 Paris 13
Prices
Free
Official website
www.mobiliernational.culture.gouv.fr
