Prof. Cara Michell Artist in Residence in Paris

Prof. Cara Michell was a 2024-2025 laureate and summer 2025 Artist in Residence at the prestigious Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. 
 
*About the Residency* 
The Cité internationale des arts is one of Europe’s most renowned artist residency centers, located in the heart of Paris’s historic Marais district. Each year, the institution’s highly competitive 2-12 program selects only 72 laureates from international applicants across all artistic disciplines. This year’s cohort represented 28 nationalities, with Professor Michell among just 18 visual artists selected for live-in studio residencies. 
 
Selection committees, comprised of qualified personalities from each artistic discipline, evaluated applications based on professional background, project quality, the necessity for an artistic residency in Paris, planned work protocols, and established or desired professional contacts. The residency provides artists with dedicated studio space and immersion in a community of 325 international artists across all disciplines and generations. 
 
*Professor Michell’s Project: “Black Psychogeographies”* 
During her residency, Prof. Michell advanced her ongoing research into “Black Psychogeographies”—a practice that maps the emotional, experiential, and relational dimensions of how Black bodies navigate racialized space. Her project combined participatory mapping workshops with textile-based art-making to create alternative cartographies that center Black spatial knowledge. 
 
*Open Studios Exhibition* 
Prof. Michell’s residency culminated in “Deconstructing Cartography,” an open studios exhibition featuring large-scale textile maps created through hand-stitching, needle-felting, and mixed-media collage. These works visually represent the “invisible geographies” of diaspora belonging while questioning the colonial legacies embedded in conventional mapping practices. 

The exhibition included pieces such as “Hometown Tapestry: DC and Silver Spring,” which explores her own geographic displacement, and “Dark Travel: Mapping the Negro Motorist Green Book,” which examines historical Black spatial navigation strategies. A collaborative map created with the Franco-Cameroonian association demonstrated the potential for participatory cartography to preserve marginalized spatial histories. 
 
*Connecting Research and Practice* 
This residency represents a significant advancement in Professor Michell’s interdisciplinary work bridging art, urban planning, and critical geography. As an Assistant Professor of Race and Social Justice in the Built Environment, she continues to develop methodologies that challenge traditional planning practices while centering community knowledge and spatial justice. 

The work produced during this residency will contribute to her forthcoming “Atlas of Black Psychogeographies” and supports Prof. Michell’s broader research agenda examining how mapping practices can become tools for liberation rather than colonial control.