A 20-Year Legacy of Support for French Artists

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/19/arts/kapwani-kiwanga-marcel-duchamp-prize.html

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PARIS — The conceptual artist Kapwani Kiwanga, whose latest exhibition here recreates elaborate floral arrangements from archival photographs to capture a moment in time, was awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp on Monday in a celebration that also marked the 20th anniversary of the prize.

The award, viewed as France’s answer to Britain’s Turner Prize, is named after one of France’s most influential 20th-century artists and is given to an artist born or working in France. Ms. Kiwanga, a native of Canada, works in Paris.

The winner was announced by Bernard Blistène, director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Center.

“At a time of rising nationalism around the world, it is important to emphasize that this is not a ‘nationalistic’ prize, but the recognition of an international artist who is part of the French art scene,” said Mr. Blistène, who also presides over the seven-person jury. Members include Gitte Orskou, director of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and Marie-Cécile Zinsou, president of the Zinsou Foundation in Benin, in West Africa.

The award ceremony at the museum went ahead despite the pandemic that forced the cancellation of the annual International Contemporary Art Fair, or FIAC. The fair, which would have opened on Thursday, is usually the focal point of a buoyant week of art-filled events in the French capital. This year, the ceremony was held against a background of global travel restrictions compounded by a local nighttime curfew in place in Paris.

“It isn’t because we are going through a terrible period that this public institution should not stand for hope for the future,” Mr. Blistène said.

With the prize Ms. Kiwanga was awarded 35,000 euros (about $41,000). The other nominees were Alice Anderson, Hicham Berrada and Enrique Ramírez, selected by a committee of the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art, a group of about 400 art collectors that created the prize.

The appropriation of history is the subject of “Flowers for Africa,” a series of installations by Ms. Kiwanga that consist of elaborately arranged fresh flowers, suspended as a garland from the ceiling or set in bouquets on pedestals. Each is a “reconstruction” of a floral arrangement the artist has gleaned from an archival photograph of an official ceremony marking the independence of an African country.

“The flowers wilt and dry over time and must be replaced according to a protocol,” said Ms. Kiwanga, who is 42. “They capture a moment in history.”

Sophie Duplaix, the chief curator at the Pompidou Center, where works by the nominees will be displayed through early January, said that “all four artists have touched on the notion of time and its impact on the individual and society.”

“That common thread helped us bring harmony to a show that we hope will resonate with the public, especially in a period when we are all reconsidering our own relationship with time,” she said.

In “Flowers for Africa,” Ms. Kiwanga examines that connection by confronting history and botany. History is retold through the life cycle of flowers left to wilt for the duration of the exhibition. Her reconstruction of ceremonial bouquets underscores the shortcomings of capturing history.

“The project was born out of my own frustration at looking at images that seemed always to depict political leaders present at independence ceremonies,” she said. “I wanted to look beyond those central figures and focus on the flower arrangements, which were witnesses on the sidelines of those historical events.”

After studying anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, Ms. Kiwanga attended the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

This year is also the 20th anniversary of the Duchamp prize, and to mark this milestone, a six-month exhibition at the museum honors previous winners.

“I believe in French art for its spirit, its elegance and its joie de vivre,” said Gilles Fuchs, a collector and president of the association.

“This prize recognizes an artist whose innovative practice is representative of a generation and reflects the creativity of the French art scene,” he added. “The 20th-anniversary show is evidence of our continued support of the artists.”

Mr. Blistène said the award “is not driven by ‘market’ interests.” He added that the association collectors “are not motivated by commercial interests nor by mundane or ‘domestic’ considerations like whether they can hang the art in their living rooms.”

Among the other nominees, Mr. Berrada’s artistic practice sits at the junction of science and nature. His installation, “Présage, SiO2,” is a 12-minute video showing the reaction that occurs when he pours silicon dioxide, a component used in making concrete, to activate a controlled chemical reaction in a glass tank filled with a mixture of acid and water. A mesmerizing landscape of moving shapes is captured in the video, projected onto a large screen. Mr. Berrada, 34, a native of Morocco, lives and works in Paris and Roubaix, in northern France.

The French-born Alice Anderson, 47, reflects on memory in a presentation made up of drawings, dance movements and totemic sculptures constructed from “recorded” everyday objects — like a computer mouse or a mobile phone — wrapped in copper thread, that connect man to technology.

“Technology is driving a change of civilization,” Ms. Anderson said. “These objects are mummified to be preserved.”

On a wall in the space dedicated to Mr. Ramírez, 41, a Chilean multimedia artist who lives and works in Paris and Santiago, are the words: “The future always repeats itself inseparable from the past.” The sentiment ties together several pieces that touch on issues of migration and history.

At the center, a video depicts a man entangled in the twisted fabric of a sail floating in the sea, in what could be interpreted as either a slow struggle for survival or a metaphor for a return to the fetal state inside a womb.

“The sea and the sail evoke both freedom and failure,” Mr. Ramírez said. “My work is less about politics and more about poetry.”

Mr. Fuchs said the ADIAF (it is referred to with its French abbreviation) was founded in 1994 to promote the nation’s art. At the time, French artists were at a low point, their work was being purchased only by the state, and there were few private French art collections.

“Matisse had not been dead very long, yet the French art scene was completed discredited to the point that some even referred to Marcel Duchamp as an American painter,” Mr. Fuchs said.

“But thanks to the support of the Centre Pompidou from Day 1 and our own efforts, this prize has gained the prestige it has today,” he said.

The prize is less a launchpad for young artists than a spotlight on a body of work by more established names like Kader Attia, the 2016 winner, who went on to receive both the Joan Miró Prize and the Yanghyun Prize the next year.

For many past winners, the prize has been a genuine boost to their careers, particularly thanks to the three-month show at the Pompidou.

“All prizes and encouragements are welcome in the life of an artist,” Thomas Hirschhorn, a Swiss artist who was awarded the first prize, wrote in a statement to the French press ahead of this year’s announcement.

“As an artist, I need my work to be shown, talked about and critiqued,” he wrote. “What is concrete about this prize and what really mattered to me were the prize money, the funding I received from ADIAF for a new piece, and my show at the Centre Pompidou.”

Laurent Grasso, a French multimedia artist who won in 2008, noted the attention the prize brought him. “Some 45,000 visitors came to my show at the museum,” he said. “This prize generates a lot of positive energy around the work of an artist.”

Upstairs, in the main galleries of the museum, works by all 19 past winners are displayed among pieces from the museum’s permanent collections.

“The dialogue with our historical pieces shows how more recent works fit into an ongoing artistic tradition,” said Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov, the curator of the show.

“Some people consider contemporary artists to be engaged in a perpetual reinvention of art,” Mr. Liucci-Goutnikov said. “But this show demonstrates that art is a heritage being constantly renewed.”