This October, the 2025 Artist Announcement Event for the Sino-French Artist Cross-Residency Programme was held at The Choi Centre Cloud House in Beijing. Guillaume Désange, Director of Palais de Tokyo, was joined by Florent Aydalot, Cultural, Educational and Cooperation Counsellor of the French Embassy in China, and Aude Urucun Brunel, Cultural Attaché, for the event. Together with Jonathan KS Choi, Chairman of the Jonathan KS Choi Foundation and key initiator of the programme, they unveiled the roster of resident artists for the 2025 cycle.

The Cross-Residency Programme was first announced by President Emmanuel Macron of France during the opening ceremony of the 17th Croisements Festival, on the occasion of his state visit to China in 2023.

During President Macron’s return visit to China this December, he met Jonathan KS Choi at a private dinner, where the two reaffirmed the vital role of artistic exchange between the two nations and discussed potential expansions for the programme moving forward.

This widely anticipated cultural exchange initiative is jointly anchored by two core platforms: The Choi Centre Cloud House and Paris’ Palais de Tokyo, forming a pioneering bridge linking artistic creation across China and France. Having completed its inaugural year with resounding success, the programme has entered a new phase of deepened cooperation. As the programme’s principal supporter, the Jonathan KS Choi Foundation leverages its cultural centre to deliver comprehensive, long-term operational backing ensuring the project’s sustainability.

Building a Full-Spectrum Support Framework to Forge a New Model for Artistic Exchange

Running over three years (2024–2026), the Cross-Residency Programme is co-led by The Choi Centre Cloud House and Palais de Tokyo, with joint implementation support from the French Embassy in China and the Institut Français. The programme’s mission is to empower artists and creators to envision new ways of living on our shared planet, advance social transformation through artistic collaboration, build enduring cultural ties by connecting Chinese and French creators, and contribute to the broader landscape of contemporary art and global dialogue.

In its delivery of the residency, The Choi Centre Cloud House has established a robust all-round support system. It provides French resident artists with fully equipped, tranquil living and working spaces, while actively facilitating dialogue with China’s art ecosystem. The centre arranges academic talks and workshops at leading art institutions including Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts, the Central Academy of Fine Arts, and Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, enabling extensive, in-depth professional exchange. The artist selection process adheres strictly to principles of openness, fairness and inclusivity, offering equal opportunities to promising creative practitioners.

Deepening International Partnerships to Explore New Avenues for Artistic Innovation

During discussions, Guillaume Désange, Director of Palais de Tokyo, remarked:

“Beyond fostering dialogue between individual artists, our expanded partnership with the Jonathan KS Choi Foundation enables broader collaboration between our two art institutions, and indeed our two nations. We face many overlapping challenges in our globalised world, yet our responses differ vastly. Artists shaped by distinct cultural backgrounds bring wholly unique perspectives to these shared questions — and I am greatly excited to witness this exchange.”

Jonathan KS Choi shared his perspective:

“Cultural and artistic exchange fosters amicable cooperation between nations. I am immensely proud and honoured to have built The Choi Centre Cloud House as a platform for grassroots international diplomacy, and I am committed to expanding its impact for years to come.”

Daisy Dai and Roy Köhnke Named Resident Artists for the 2025 Cycle

The 2025 resident artist cohort was officially unveiled at the event: Chinese curator Daisy Dai and French artist Roy Köhnke will embark on three-month cross-cultural creative residencies respectively.

Born in 1990, Daisy Dai’s research centres on how space, as a form of social production, constructs bodies, desires and systems of knowledge. Her recent curatorial investigations examine botanical gardens as spatial typologies, their links to China’s early modernisation, and the production of herbal knowledge as reproductive technology. Her interdisciplinary practice explores layers of cultural memory. She shared that during her residency at Palais de Tokyo, she will collaborate with two fellow curators on research into ruality, unpacking the possibilities for cross-cultural dialogue and narrative-building across divergent contexts.

Born in 1990, Roy Köhnke’s practice originates in sculpture, expanding into painting, text and audiovisual installation. Drawing inspiration from queer theory and science fiction literature, his work challenges conventional narratives around the body and identity. Köhnke hopes to draw fresh creative inspiration from China’s cultural heritage during his residency at The Choi Centre Cloud House in Beijing.

Cultivating a Sustained Platform for Mutual Civilisational Exchange

Per the terms of the programme, Daisy Dai has travelled to Palais de Tokyo for a three-month residency, while Roy Köhnke is based at The Choi Centre Cloud House in Beijing. Central to the initiative is its process-led ethos: artists are not required to complete finished artworks during their residencies. Instead, they are encouraged to fully immerse themselves in foreign cultural environments, gather creative inspiration, and forge lasting artistic connections.

With the launch of this new residency cycle, the collaborative model forged by major Chinese and French cultural institutions demonstrates enduring vitality. It delivers invaluable creative opportunities to artists from both countries, while carving out new avenues for profound cross-civilisational dialogue, embodying the unique power of cultural exchange to advance global mutual understanding.

Upcoming Open Studio Events

As a key component of the residency programme, The Choi Centre Cloud House will host an Open Studio on 8 January 2026, inviting the public to engage with the resident artist’s research journeys and evolving creative lines.Separately, Palais de Tokyo hosted its own Open House on 13–14 December 2025, welcoming audiences into the working spaces of resident artists and curators to experience their site-based research and creative thinking first-hand. All those interested in contemporary art and cross-cultural exchange are warmly invited to attend.

Artist Biographies