Everything you need to know about the Dauphine Prize for Contemporary Art 2020!

The Dauphine Prize for Contemporary Art would have been gearing up for it’s 7th year! Covid-19 or not, the young team of enthusiasts in charge of the event was able to find an alternative in order to achieve its ends. From the 10th to the 19th September 2020, the event will be at the Galerie du Crous where the five selected pairs will be exhibited. Created in 2014 by students at Paris Dauphine University, this event reserved for artists who are less than 30 years old has the objective of promoting creations by young people.

The two entities being honored the artist and the curator have as a guideline to create a project based around a particular theme, which will then be the object of a selection process by a designated jury. Discover more about the 2020 edition!

#1 What are the specifications for this year? 

As with previous years, the jury of the Dauphine Prize is made up of professionals from the world of contemporary art. Marion Papillon, president of the Comité professionnel des galeries d’art (CGPA) and of Galerie Papillon, is part of the jury. At her side is Alexia Fabre, Director and Chief Curator at the Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne. Also in attendance will be Stanislas Colodiet, director of Cirva (Centre international de recherche sur le verre et les arts plastiques) and Paul Heintz, who was awarded the Emerige Revelations Scholarship in 2019. Finally, they will be accompanied by Daria de Beauvais who is none other than the Senior Curator of the Palais de Tokyo. 

The five members of the jury will nominate the winning pair, who will receive 2000 euros. A second team will be given an award of 1000 euros, courtesy of a prize awarded by the public. 

Each year, the teams work around a given subject. For the 2020 edition, they must be inspired by the concept of ‘artificiality’. Artists and curators are therefore invited to think and reconsider this theme, to reveal its forms and manifestations. Difficult to grasp, artificiality is rich in meaning and ambiguity, which makes it all the more exciting to analyze…

#2 Who are the talented pairs?

Anna L’hospital is a graduate artist from the University of Applied Arts of the Rhine (HEAR). Working principally with scotch tape, she draws inspiration from her personal history to create commemorative works. This material, seen as a second skin, is covered with imprints, marks of life. Anna wraps furniture with scotch tape and cuts it, in order to free the object. In 2019, she committed to a large-scale project and co-founded the ‘Collectif Embrayage’, in order to allow young artists to exhibit their artworks in atypical places. 

The Curator, Agathe Anglionin, is both an architect and also the exhibition curator. She is notably a member of the association ‘Quelque chose de neuf’, an art centre which produces ten innovative artistic projects each year. The pair proposes an installation that makes full use of the space entirely to disseminate several hybrid forms. Faced with these works, it is like the spectator is faced with fragility and emptiness. The theme of artificiality is particularly explored through the notion of skin, the principal element of a reflection on appearance. 

The artist, Noémie Pilo, studies at the École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. Armed with her background in Space Art, she draws her inspiration for her work from everyday phenomena which are often deemed insignificant. Through her practise, mundane things become distinctive events. The curator, Ines Juster, studies the history and theory of art and images at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). She mainly focuses her reflection on the existing relations between visual culture and the history of ideas. 

The pair do not consider artificiality as an obstacle to creation, but rather as a way of capturing the essence of a phenomenon. Here, it is artificiality that gives form to the thing and reveals all its truth. Its own characteristics, pejoratives in the collective imagination, are revealed through the project of these two young women. It is no longer accused or denounced, but fully used and translated into a work of art.

Through his work, Guillaume Bouisset explores the development of forms and the structures of living species. He concentrates this research around the themes of incarnation and sacred architecture. He questions multiple worlds and dimensions, always trying to find links between everything. Balance, transformation, mutation…These are the key words of his artistic practice. 

The artist collaborates with Clément Thibault, curator, art writer and previously editor in chief of the Art Media Agency. Author of multiple artist monographs, he is also a graduate in history of art and cultural management. Currently, he teaches history of art in various institutions such as ICART and IESA. The two young men study the notions of microcosm and macrocosm. Through the realization of sculptures, the duo question the metamorphosis, which they make mutable. 

After graduating in Art at the ESAD in Reims, the artist Anaëlle Rambaud has a multidisciplinary artistic practice, shared between photography, video, sculpture and painting. Through her work, she manipulates images and proposes a reflexion on their true function. She is associated with Cholé Godefroy, project manager at FRAC Champagne-Ardenne. Excited by the field of visual arts, she also has a curatorial practice and is developing a critical writing practise. 

Anaëlle Rambaud wants to take on the theme of artificiality through the manipulation of images and seduction. For the Dauphine Prize for Contemporary Art, the duo presented the series ‘Collection’ (2019). The project, which uses images found on the internet or in old encyclopedias, has the ambition of leasing a new life to the fixed images on a particular media. The images are therefore given a new, more artistic meaning.

The artist Monika Emmanuelle Kazi, after training in architecture, is now in her last year at the Haute École d’art et de design (HEAD) in Geneva. Her work concentrates principally on the study of body memory within domestic spaces. Her composite installations combine the organic, the manufactured and the textual. The curator of the duo, Amandine Nana, completed her training at the École Normale Supérieur with a masters in history of art at Paris 1, as well as at the École Urbaine des Sciences Po Paris. Gearing her curatorial skills towards the corporality of memory and the production of space, she is mindful of assembly and misappropriation. Amandine Nana also immerses herself in the tropicality which is inspired by Black Studies. 

The project, ‘Beauté na yo’, questions the existing relation between man and the standardized object. The installation is based on mirrors engraved with photographs and a mixture of cosmetic, organic and mineral materials. Thus it questions essential notions such as appearance, personality and the quest to understand oneself. 

Now that you know all about these pairs, all you have to do is to discover their works. Meet between the 10th – 19th September at the Galerie du Crous (11 rue des Beaux-Arts, 75006 Paris) to discover the work and inspiring personalities of these young artists and curators, about whom you won’t have heard the last of! Dauphine Prize for Contemporary Art 2020, here we go!