Le Centre international de recherche sur le verre et les arts plastiques (Cirva)

Residency brief

The Centre international de recherche sur le verre et les arts plastiques (Cirva) is an art centre that places creation at the heart of its project. Occupying a unique position on the world stage since 1983, it invites artists and designers to work with a precise material, glass, in an atmosphere of total freedom.

The Cirva holds a collection including more than one thousand items, documenting the various creative experiments undertaken with the artists, who donate specific pieces to the association at the end of their collaboration. The Cirva has always sought to share the creative experiments being conducted in its studio through various partnerships and loans for exhibitions and events held at other institutions. In the studio, the Cirva is committed to share its activities with the public during open house days.

The Cirva is a non-profit association, recognized for general interest, which has been supported since its creation by the Ministry of Culture / regional directorate of cultural affairs Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, by the City of Marseille, by the Sud Paca regional council and the Bouches-du-Rhône departmental council.

  • Thematic focus Arts and Crafts, Visual arts
  • Location Marseille
  • Dates 4 short stays across 2026 and 2027
  • Length of stay 10 weeks
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Our Space

At the Cirva, artists and designers are met by a team of very high-level glass technicians with whom a dialogue begins. This exchange unfolds over time, through repeated visits to the Cirva which is located in a former industrial building dating from the 1920s, in the heart of the Joliette district in the centre of Marseille, a city open to the Mediterranean. There, the art centre provides artists in residency with a studio in which they are accommodated during their stay. Featuring both hot and cold glass workshops, the Cirva allows techniques such as glassblowing, thermoforming and casting (pâte de verre) to be explored during the research. This approach is instrumental in allowing the artists to undertake bold experiments during which unlimited avenues of thought encounter a material with a complex and unpredictable reputation.

The Cirva differs from the traditional residency format by fostering long-lasting relationships based on the artist’s project, and by encouraging research initiatives that are not bound by predetermined production objectives.

As research projects develop, the Cirva supports artists and designers in promoting their work by connecting them with institutions, exhibition curators and art critics on the one hand, and engineers and producers specialising in glasswork, as well as gallery owners and publishers on the other hand. The Cirva nurtures these networks, which embody a rhizomatic approach to thinking and promote an innovative, sustainable economy.

Manish Pushkale

Visual artist

CIRVA is a globally known outstanding centre in France to conduct research on glass. As being a multidisciplinary contemporary artist, I am finding it very interesting to challenge myself with this ancient medium which is still a new and unexplored medium to me. During my residency, I am keen to understand and explore the possibilities of the ignition between the old and new aspects of glass making, my research will revolve around its exploration as either its "newness of the old" or the "oldness of new"

Manish Pushkale is a leading contemporary Indian abstract artist known for his contemplative, layered canvases. A self-taught painter from Bhopal, he represented India at the Festival of India in France (2016) and exhibited alongside his mentor S.H. Raza at the Venice Biennale (2010). In 2023, the Musée Guimet in Paris invited him to create To Whom the Bird Should Speak?, a powerful installation that explores memory, writing, and the fragility of intangible heritage. A former fellow at the Nantes Institute of Advanced Study, he is also a trustee of the Raza and Krishna Sobti Foundations.