Abdelkader Benchamma
Commission for the Ballroom’s new ceiling – Villa Albertine, New York
Abdelkader Benchamma’s monumental project has been selected to transform the ceiling of Villa Albertine’s Ballroom, at the heart of one of New York’s most significant cultural landmarks.
Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education within the French Embassy of the United States, is thrilled to unveil Stella Terrae, a striking, monumental artwork exploring humanity’s celestial origins created exclusively for its Fifth Avenue headquarters. Painted on the ceiling of the iconic Ballroom of the Payne Whitney Mansion, itself a renowned example of New York’s Gilded Age, the mural was inaugurated in a ceremony held on September 27, 2026 in the presence of the artist.
The design of Stella Terrae was conceived by French artist Abdelkader Benchamma, who was selected as the laureate of a jury-led competition in June 2026. Exhibiting in Europe as well as internationally, his concept was selected from a field of 225 site-specific entries. Benchamma’s body of work is further distinguished by his selection as a member of the 2026 cohort of Villa Albertine Residents, where he will continue his artistic explorations during a two-month sojourn in the United States.
Stella Terrae features shades of dark blue and purple, combined with iridescent accents, to evoke a celestial body in perpetual motion. For this mural, Benchamma drew inspiration from a rich body of iconography depicting celestial scenes, spanning from antiquity to the present day. Some of these depictions were created using gold leaf applied by Pierre-Yves Morel, an award-winning artisan renowned for his mastery of trompe-l’œil, with whom Benchamma had previously collaborated on large-scale projects in France, notably at the Vitry-sur-Seine metro station and the Centre Pompidou.
“Stella Terrae is dynamic in its very making, created in situ, in dialogue with the scale and tensions of the space, yet seemingly still through the delicacy of its execution: an invitation towards contemplation,” explained Abdelkader Benchamma. “At its core, the mural tells an essential story: humanity’s relationship with the sky, shaped by observation, knowledge, and imaginative narratives. It situates itself within a long continuum of ways of representing the cosmos while offering a contemporary interpretation of that legacy. Its title refers to a mysterious substance sometimes reported after meteorite falls. Known as “star jelly,” or stella terrae (“star of the earth”), it is surrounded by myths and contradictory interpretations, as though the celestial realm could never be fully defined, explained, or contained.”
“With the creation of Stella Terrae, Abdelkader Benchamma has brought a bold, beautiful, and modern vision to Villa Albertine that is resonant with our Ballroom,” stated Mohamed Bouabdallah, Cultural Counselor of France within the United States and Director of Villa Albertine. “His investigations of the cosmos will enthrall visitors when they enter the most emblematic space in our headquarters for years to come. We eagerly look forward to the research he will produce during his residency in the United States.”
Stella Terrae has been made possible through the exceptional support of the Sisley-d’Ornano Foundation, with additional support from French Heritage Society’s New York Chapter and Ann and Bill Van Ness.
The project was developed in close collaboration with the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP), with the support of Maison Sennelier, which provided the inks used in the creation of the work.
The artist
Born in 1975 in Mazamet (France), Abdelkader Benchamma lives and works in Paris and Montpellier.
A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Montpellier and the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris, his preferred medium is drawing.
Nourished by literature, philosophy and astrophysics, his drawn installations continually challenge exhibition spaces, becoming, in his words, “spaces of resonance”, conducive to the summoning of memories, both individual and collective, geological and spiritual.
His vast ephemeral frescoes are painted directly onto walls with ink, transforming architecture into an otherworld, a world of flux and mental landscapes, between the recognizable and the indiscernible, on the border between the physical and the symbolic. Reflecting on the workings of perception, his works explore our systems of knowledge, the survival of myths and beliefs, but also reminiscences, retinal or neuronal persistence, whether on museum walls or sheets of paper.
