Announcement of the winners

Contemporary Talents 12th edition

Last February, four committees of experts selected the works or projects of 33 finalists from among the 433 candidates.

The 2023 grand jury, chaired by Jean-Noël Jeanneney, was composed of :

Rosa-Maria Malet – Director of the Miró Foundation 1980 – 2017, member of the Board of Directors (Barcelona)
Constance de Monbrison – Head of the Insulinde collections, musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac (Paris)
Alfred Pacquement – Honorary General Curator of Heritage (Paris)
Ernest Pignon-Ernest – Artist  (Paris)
Roland Wetzel – Director of the Museum Tinguely (Basel )

The artists featured in this 12th edition are Ulysse Bordarias, Bilal Hamdad, Manon Lanjouère, Aurélien Mauplot, Ugo Schiavi and Noémi Sjöberg.
Ulysse Bordarias presents a multitude of storms in a large graphite drawing, Il pleuvait sur l’agora ; Bilal Hamdad presents Sans titre, the first painting in his ongoing series L’Horizon ; Manon Lanjouère recreates an abyssal atmosphere by presenting our waste in the form of underwater species in Les particules, le conte humain d’une eau qui meurt (the human tale of dying water) ; In Les Possessions, Aurélien Mauplot brings together maps of all the countries in the world based on Jules Verne’s Tour du monde en 80 jours; Ugo Schiavi presents Léviathan, a fountain-creature created from abandoned objects and a host of other materials; and Noémi Sjöberg explores the issues of mass tourism with her music box One euro to jump now.

We warmly congratulate the artists and look forward to welcoming their works to the collection in the near future.

Download the press release.

The lauréats

Ulysse Bordarias

Born in 1988 in Paris (France) | Lives and works in Paris (France)

Ulysse Bordarias graduated from the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris in 2014. He mainly practices painting and drawing, but also works in volume and photography. He is interested in the relationship between image and poetry, compositional work, the imaginary and the documentary dimension. Recently, he has exhibited at the Valérie Delaunay gallery in Paris, which represents him (2021), and at the Mariton municipal gallery in Saint-Ouen (2018).

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Il pleuvait sur l’agora, 2022. Graphite, black stone and charcoal, 200 × 310 cm

Il pleuvait sur l’agora shows a multitude of thunderstorms, rains, tornadoes that fall and move over urban or rural territories. The rain falls from a set of clouds that fly over the land. Swimmers populate the image at regular distances and struggle in this hostile environment. On land there are cities, mountains, coastlines, fields as well as lakes and seas. The drawing shows all the stages of the terrestrial water cycle: from sea water to clouds, and from clouds to rain as they disperse water over the land. The artist gathers these data and makes them cohabit in order to create a changing, moving space, close to dreams and memories. The title  (It rained on the agora) is inspired by the version «Le corbeau et le renard» (The crow and the fox) (1968) by the Belgian artist Marcel Broodthaers in the form of a poem itself inspired by the famous fable by La Fontaine. In the drawing, the agora is made present by the four amphitheatres, which allude to public space, debate and democratic construction. The metaphorical dimension of this title is that of the rain as a figure of the troubles that can occur somewhere.

Bilal Hamdad

Born in 1987 in Sidi Bel Abbes (Algeria) | Live and work in Paris (France)

Bilal Hamdad began his art studies in Algeria at Sidi Bel Abbés, then at the ENSA in Bourges. He then joined the Beaux-Arts de Paris from which he graduated in 2018. Questioned by current events, population movements, miscegenation and the Parisian urban landscape, the artist paints a striking portrait of our contemporary society. The artist has already won several prizes, recently the Société Générale prize and the Colas Foundation prize. His works are in numerous private and public collections.

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Sans titre, 2022. Oil on canvas, 160 × 200 × 4,5 cm

Sans titre is a work from a series of paintings dealing with the sensitive subject of immigration. Bilal Hamdad proposes here a reinterpretation of the painting Ophelia by John Everett Millais. The place of water becomes as present as that of the person represented. The sleeping man gives us the reflection of a sad truth, that of our society which looks away. What has happened to this character? What details left in the darkness of the canvas would help us interpret the pictorial scene? The water gradually nibbles away at the recumbent figure until it takes over the foreground. He is bathing in stagnant, rotting water. Water is omnipresent during the crossings made by migrants. It seems dangerous. It is no longer a question of representing an idyllic sea but rather this black, dark water… Since his arrival in Paris, Bilal Hamdad has been observing the urban and mixed-race fabric, which he considers to be fertile ground for the creation of his paintings. Sans titre is the first of the Horizon series. The following paintings are in progress.

Manon Lanjouère

Born in 1993 in Paris (France) | Lives and works between Saint-Malo and Paris (France)

After a course in Art History, Manon Lanjouere graduated from the Gobelins school of photography. Her work, widely exhibited in France and abroad, has been awarded several prizes and is present in the collections of the MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie), the CNAP, the Musée de l’Élysée, the Musée Nicéphore Niepce. Winner of the creative residency Tara Océan and of the 1+2 Photography and Science prize, these distinctions enabled her to create her project Les Particules.

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Les particules, le conte humain d’une eau qui meurt, 2022. Six cyanotype prints on glass, 6 × (20 × 20 cm)

The abyssal atmosphere of the work Les particules, Le conte humain d’une eau qui meurt is composed of six cyanotypes on glass augmented by a second plate painted with fluorescent vinyl emulsion to recall the bioluminescent proteins of certain marine organisms. The image is intended to be like the ghost of these endangered species. Les particules propose to enter the still layer of the waters, to lift the shroud over the invisible people, and to plunge the spectator into an abyss of reflection. Plastic waste, collected on the beaches, allows the artist to reproduce these underwater species using a scientific and documentary posture, frontally on a cyanotype background. Like the water that is projected onto one’s face, the work wishes to awaken this energy of seeing, transforming the gaze into a clear and easy action leading to a real awareness.

Aurélien Mauplot

Born in 1983 in Vincennes (France) | Lives and works in Creuse (France)

Aurélien Mauplot studied art and communication at the University before coordinating an artists’ residency. He now deploys his own research-explorations, dedicated to elsewhere, revealing an insular and multidisciplinary narrative work where reality and imagination merge. He has exhibited regularly since 2014, notably at the Mamac, the Mucem and the Macval, as well as abroad in Italy and Chile, and has taken part in numerous residencies, including Nekatonea, Dos Mares and the Musée national de Préhistoire (Les Eyzies, Dordogne).

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Les Possessions, 2014. Digital prints on 331 pages of a book, variables dimensions

Les Possessions brings together maps of all the countries of the world as well as a number of islands and archipelagos. Curved, straight and sometimes indecent lines draw the national and maritime borders of the world. From these ephemera with rigid shapes emerges the idea that the map is not the territory. Black and disoriented, the lines become abstract and random forms, floating islands printed one by one on each page of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days. On 24 January 1772, Commander Crozet planted the French flag on the main island of an archipelago that now bears his name, saying: « In the name of France, I take possession of this island; this island will be called Possession Island! ». Two hundred years later, a group of overwintering scientists surveyed the archipelago and named the peaks the Jules Verne Mountains. Les Possessions are located here and there, in the wake of an unstable geography of our civilisations.

Ugo Schiavi

Born in 1987 in Neuilly-sur-Seine (France) | Lives and works in Marseille (France)

Ugo Schiavi studied at the Villa Arson in Nice, where he developed his sculptural vocabulary often rooted in archaeology. He places them in our contemporary era and its realities by arranging the whole in the form of a narrative or narrative mythology. Selected for the Emerige prize (2016), nominated for the SAM or Audit Talent prizes (2020), Ugo Schiavi is presented in exhibitions in France and abroad. He has designed numerous large-scale projects: Soulèvement for the Nuit Blanche 2018 or Grafted Memory System during his participation in the sixteenth Lyon Biennale (2022).

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Leeviathan, 2022. Sculpture, various materials, 290 × 65 × 65 cm

Rather than a gushing fountain, Leviathan appears to be a creature struggling to breathe, a chimera pouring water over its enigmatic body. Breaking away from the aesthetics of monumental fountains and archaeological finds, this multifaceted installation presents itself as a living being. It proudly displays its artificial nature, made of abandoned objects, branches, reproductions of ancient statues, plastic bottles, cables… while revealing its tormented genesis: an accumulation of successes, responsibilities, attempts and failures. Like many cosmogonic myths, Ugo Schiavi’s stories begin with water. As all life forms take essence from this element, the artist then models his raw material from this element, weaving links with our present world, its social and environmental crises. Leviathan addresses key notions of global importance, while resonating deeply with the past, present and future of the sea. It speaks to our desperate need to imagine a different future, including the monstrosities we have created.

Noémi Sjöberg

Born in 1978 in Madrid (Spain) | Lives and works in Barcelone (Spain)

A graduate of the École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix en Provence, Noemi Sjöberg specialises in video, photography and installation. She questions the everyday, «until the ordinary becomes strange, extraordinary and unreal». She exhibits at IFFR Rotterdam (2018), Rooftop Films New York (2019/2022), Centro de arte la Panera (2010), Färgfabriken (2010/2022). Winner of the Embellir Paris 2019 call for applications, she created the perennial work Plongeon. In 2021, winner of the artist residency at IHOI, La Réunion, she created the works Femme plurielle and Terre à l’horizon.

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One euro to jump now, 2021. Video (4 min) in a pine wood box, velvet, mirror, 230 x 140 x 45 mm

One euro to jump now is a call for awareness of the harmful effects of tourism on our environment. In Porto, on the Dom-Luis Bridge, young people jump from different heights into the Douro River while surrounded by a multitude of tourists. All kinds of vehicles pass under the bridge, contaminating the water: tourist boats, cruisers, motorboats… The work, a «video object», is presented in a wooden and red velvet box, like a souvenir object, in which images scroll vertically, to the manipulated sound of a music box. For one euro, despite the danger, the young people are ready to make a spectacle of themselves. The Douro River then looks like an amusement park. A mirror inside the box reflects the video. This one is broken, because travelling unconsciously, polluting the environment with millions of flights and cruises, affects the planet and our species in all its social, economic, ecological and political dimensions. Mass tourism is no longer relevant, the toy is broken.

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