Les Chemins du Sud: A Flawed Localist Thesis at Mrac Occitanie

The summer exhibition 'Les Chemins du Sud, une théorie du mineur' at the Musée régional d’art contemporain Occitanie in Sérignan (June 23 to November 3, 2019) attempts to critique Northern capitalist dominance by valorizing Southern, vernacular, and collaborative practices. Curated by Charlotte Cosson and Emmanuelle Luciani of Southway Studio, the show features works from the Pre-Raphaelites to Pattern & Decoration, including pieces by Betty Woodman, Robert Kushner, Zoë Paul, Matthew Lutz-Kinoy, and Lucile Littot. However, critic Laurent Perez argues that the exhibition's binary opposition between 'Nord' (evil: capitalism, modernity, Protestantism) and 'Sud' (good: rustic, communal, Catholic) is intellectually impoverished. He notes that the curators' reading of Max Weber is dated and ignores later scholarship by Giacomo Todeschini. The show also neglects actual Occitan traditions and fails to distinguish its own decorative productions from suburban industrial artifacts. Perez compares it unfavorably to the 2017 'Laboratoire d'Europe' exhibition in Strasbourg, warning that such hollow localism undermines genuine decentralization.