Between the City, Myself and Paris
My relationship with the city has never been only a matter of geography. I have always read the city as a body — one that breathes, that has a memory, that sometimes falls silent but never forgets. I began this reading in Istanbul. But Paris changed the accent of the language.
The exhibition follows a single day in the life of an aristocratic family in 1780s Paris. It begins at seven in the morning as the curtains are drawn, and ends at midnight, when, after the médianoche, the household surrenders to Morpheus. Everything happens in between: the toilette rituals of the bedchamber, the quiet working hours of the library, the splendour of tables laid for service à la française, small concerts in the salons, the gaming tables of the late night.
More than 550 original objects. Most of them from rarely shown collections. Boiseries, furniture, porcelain, garments, jewellery, toys… Yet the real effect lies not in the objects but in the rhythm between them. The exhibition space is divided by a cinematic light: morning, afternoon, night. Each room carries the atmosphere of a particular hour. And that atmosphere is not only visual — there is scent, there is sound. Time is not abstract; it is sensory.
This exhibition reminds me that what we call a city is, in fact, a choreography of lived moments. A way of waking in the morning, the light of a room, a hand touching a fabric… All of it is part of an aesthetics of living. But this aesthetics is not limited to what is visible. Inside the house there is an unseen order — layered, silent, yet exact. The servants live in the attic, the children in a separate world, the masters at the centre. Closeness is measured by distance. Service is considered flawless the more invisible it becomes.
Time, like space, is divided. The day that begins with the first light of morning is bound not to hours but to rhythms. The steam of a soup, the smell of coffee, the opening of a curtain… Clocks stand on the mantelpieces, but real time flows through the habits of bodies. The garden is not an escape in the middle of the city but a form of status. The greenery hidden behind the walls is like a private universe built against the crowd of the outside world. Yet this universe is not entirely closed. For here, being seen is a way of existing.
When evening falls, the house changes shape once more. The salons become a space of thought, desire and performance. Women do not merely embody elegance; they speak, they steer, they decide. Music rises — harp, harpsichord, violin — but the true melody is composed within the conversation. And then the games begin. Chance, wit, risk… The turning of a card is as decisive as a brief glance. Gambling is not only an amusement but the reflection of a society walking the fine line between control and loss.
Seen from today, a day in eighteenth-century Paris is almost a performance. Time is not measured; it is performed. Spaces exist not only for shelter but for being seen, for hiding, for representing. Moving through this world, one meets the same feeling again and again: everything is utterly flawless, yet ready to break. For this refinement rests on a balance — and at one moment in history, that balance will come undone.
And perhaps this is where the exhibition is at its most honest. For the Paris of the 1780s is drawing the last breath of that aesthetic balance. It is no accident that the exhibition opens with Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord’s famous words: “Qui n’a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c’est que le plaisir de vivre.” Whoever did not live in the years around 1789 cannot know what the pleasure of living is. But that world was also a poem built on privilege. Beautiful, yes. But not for everyone. Perhaps that is why the exhibition does not only look to the past. It also holds a mirror to the present. We still build spaces and express ourselves through rooms, clothes and rituals. But nothing is fixed any more — not roles, not boundaries, not even time itself.
And yet, in the curve of a chair, the fall of a fabric, the silence of a room, you recognise the same desire: the wish to make life a little more beautiful, a little more conscious.
Perhaps this is what still makes Paris so powerful. The past is not only remembered — it is made to feel as if it were still being lived. For me, Paris is less a city than a place of memory. And at every step, it whispers the same question: How should one live?