The School

A public higher school of art falling under the oversight of the French Ministry of Culture, the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy (ENSAPC) trains artists and creatives on the international level. ENSAPC’s resolutely cross-disciplinary offerings span a wide range of disciplines, linking the visual arts, writing, live performance, sound, film, and theory. In cooperation with partners in France and abroad, the school invites artistic experimentation, invention, and study, encouraging students to play a major role in shaping their own course of study. It is a locus of lively contention and fruitful exchange, a space in which ideas, knowledge, and experience collide and coalesce in complementary ways.

Openness to the world, intercultural dialogue, and international cooperation are integral parts of ENSAPC’s institutional policy. Each year the school welcomes students, instructors, practicing artists, and art scholars from all over the world. It also organizes numerous joint projects and cooperative ventures in France and abroad.

ENSAPC offers a three-year undergraduate program leading to the Diplôme National d’Arts (DNA), equivalent to the bachelor, and a two-year master’s-level program culminating in the Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique (DNSEP). Teaching activities—courses, workshops, research plans, studios, workshops, seminars, and travel—are enriched by the hard work of research and by modes of thinking and acting that stem from students’ individual artistic practice. Through CY Cergy Paris University Graduate School of Humanities, Creation, and Heritage, the school also offers a practice-led doctorate delivered in partnership with the following institutions: CY Cergy Paris University (humanities and social sciences), the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Paysage de Versailles, and the Institut National du Patrimoine.

YGREC is ENSAPC’s exhibition space. Located in Aubervilliers, YGREC is a forum for encounters and experimentation, an interactive space in which exhibitions, teaching, research, professional development, and criticism cross-fertilize.

Visits to the campus by prominent personalities in art and academia invite a sharing of minds and practices. By embracing the distinguished visitors program, the faculty, workshop heads, students, researchers and administrators at ENSAPC and YGREC are betting on the collective capacity of hosts and visitors to chart paths of fruitful experimentation with modes of transmission, production, research, presentation, and reception—consistent with the dynamics of pedagogical, artistic, and community collaboration.