Prix Marcel Duchamp 2018

Presentation of the four finalists

Mohamed Bourouissa

In his work, Mohamed Bourouissa leans primarily towards photography. From the basis of a reflection on the periphery, the margins and exclusion, the artist works with young people from the suburbs on reinterpretations of the “living painting”, which he sets up in public spaces. The work then develops via diverse media, from video to assemblage to drawing, while maintaining a direct connection with reality. In each of his projects, artistic residencies and partnerships provide for exchange protocols that go beyond the realm of art.
The subject of the installation developed for this exhibition is an historic building – Algeria's first psychiatric hospital, built in Blida. Inaugurated in 1937, this hospital was, in the 1950s, the site of a revolutionary break from the discriminatory practices and inhumane therapies that were common during the colonial period. The psychiatrist and philosopher Frantz Fanon introduced new therapeutic methods, based on gardening, among others. Mohamed Bourouissa’s guide for this project was a former patient of the hospital, who made it through the century. An architectonic structure and a film explore this story, in which the notion of madness, the practice of domination and race theory are intertwined.

Clément Cogitore

Since the end of the 2000s, Clément Cogitore has favoured the medium of film for his work, alternating between fixed and moving images, and between the cinematographic format and installations. The notion of ritual and manifestation of the sacred underpins all of his work, which is inspired by gatherings, community happenings and present-day expressions of faith, however erratic and aimless they may be. Amalgamating the norms of fiction and documentary, the artist also draws on the model of painting. Light and shade have an almost structural function in his work: from the uprisings in Tahrir Square in 2012 to the ecstatic crowds at a rock concert, from inside a collection of paintings to the desert landscapes of Siberia, the images of the modern world become visions.
For the exhibition, Clément Cogitore worked with recovered materials. The story of a female character is told through a series of anonymous and stereotypical scenes, which were obtained from image libraries around the world used by producers of promotional films. These empty vessels, whose meaning changes depending on how they are used, are taken by the artist to another place. Shown on a large LED screen, the film tests perception, messing with the usual slickness and immediacy of the media approach.

Thu-Van Tran

Thu-Van Tran’s work encompasses a wide spectrum of techniques, from sculpture to painting via film and installations. She was influenced by two cultures, driven by reflections on the colonial history of Vietnam, and on more general systems of human and natural exploitation in the globalised world. In the literary works of Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus, Fernando Pessoa and Marguerite Duras, among others, Thu-Van Tran detects a capacity for resilience and transformation. Furthermore, the technique of casting is one of the cornerstones of her work: she has an intimate, tactile relationship with the material; the malleability of wax, rubber and resin allow for flexible methods and a fragility of shapes and language. And colour, when used on a mural scale, develops emotional and psychic resonance.
Five new works have been gathered together for this exhibition. Two frescoes and a major drawing encapsulate a study of Rainbow herbicides, which the US Army used to poison the land in Vietnam. As a counterpoint, a film shows images captured in various corners of the world, where there are glimpses of possible resistance, however symbolic. Finally, two sculptures truly engage the viewer, questioning the present and future of the human condition.

Marie Voignier

After studying physics and then photography, Marie Voignier concentrated on the medium of video for her artistic practice, devising a new method of approach for each of her projects. Driven by a spirit of enquiry and a desire to bear witness, she is interested in complex realities, stories in which several truths intermingle. From post-industrial-era heterotopias of mass entertainment to the vanity of the media theatre, from tourism in North Korea to cryptozoology in East Cameroon, her narrative subtly combines the tools of observation and editing to stretch the boundaries of the tangible and the imaginary.
The installation designed for the exhibition stems from research that began in 2010, while the artist was in Cameroon shadowing a cryptozoologist on the trail of a fictitious animal documented by the locals (L’Hypothèse du Mokélé-Mbembé, 2011). Between 2015 and 2017, Marie Voignier returned to film the locals of Salapoumbé in a series of scenes built around the rhythms of everyday life, all in a unique spirit of trust and intimacy.  In the heart of a forest that has been forgotten by the urbanised sector of the country, memories and stories find their way, history filters through in words, images and gestures.

in Code Couleur n°32, september-december 2018, pp. 30-31