CNES Launches First Salon de l'extraterrestre in Paris with 22 Artists

Key facts

• The first edition of the Salon de l'extraterrestre takes place from September 25 to 27, 2026, at FORMA, 127 Rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris.
• The salon is organized by the Observatoire de l'espace, the cultural laboratory of the Centre national d'études spatiales (CNES).
• Gérard Azoulay, an astrophysicist who joined CNES in 1988, directs the project.
• Azoulay founded the journal Espace(s) in the 2000s, later renamed Arts et Espace, and leads the CNES contemporary art collection, started in 2014 with over 160 works on deposit at the Musée des Abattoirs in Toulouse.
• The CNES art collection has been exhibited off-site with partners including the Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles in Paris, the Espace de l'art concret in Mouans-Sartoux, and the Centre des arts numériques in Enghien-les-Bains.
• The salon is not a commercial fair, though some works remain the property of the artists and are available for acquisition directly from them.
• The first edition features 22 artists, including Michel Gouéry, Mary Sue, and Jeanne Susplugas, in a 300 m² space over two floors.
• Artists were invited to create projects based on a creative protocol tied to space-related themes such as otherness, heroic everyday figures, feats, the spiritual, and eternity.