BMW Group France announces the new winning duo of the BMW ART MAKERS Prize, its patronage program dedicated to the visual arts and contemporary images.

• BMW ART MAKERS supports, within the framework of its call for
  applications, an emerging visual artist duo and a curator who come together around a project.
• The project will be presented at Rencontres d'Arles in summer 2023 and at Paris Photo in November 2023.
• BMW Group France offers a grant of 10,000 euros to the artist, a grant of 8,000 euros to the curator, and a research and production budget of 15,000 euros, followed by the production of a solo show in Arles and at Paris Photo 2023.

Paris. The artist Eva Nielsen and the curator Marianne Derrien have been named winners of the second edition of the BMW ART MAKERS among the 165 applications that were submitted.

The artist-curator duo Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien convinced the jury with their project "SpectroGéographies". This artistic project, realized within the framework of the BMW ART MAKERS program, is a new experimentation resulting from their collaboration, conceived especially for the Rencontres d'Arles and Paris Photo. The jury was seduced by this poetic and scientific approach mixing images, painting and architecture to question the time and sedimentation of the urban and Camargue landscape (territory, geology, architecture) with the use of current digital tools. They evoke the mutations of the environment, which lead to the disappearance of certain urban, industrial and natural landscapes, where the imprint of the human is always in question. They will be particularly interested in the interzones between cities and countryside, spaces abandoned by some, playgrounds for others or even sometimes survival zones.

Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien on their nomination as the BMW ART MAKERS winning duo:
"Being laureates of the BMW Art Makers, is for us the opportunity to activate this new project which invites us to renew the glance on a work sedimented by the image - hybridization between painting, photography and serigraphy. It is also the fact of testing the relationship between image, painting and architecture, always in dialogue with a space, a territory - living areas - shaped by the human hand that we wish to deepen in our project."

The jury was composed of Florence Bourgeois, Director of Paris Photo, Hervé Digne, President of Manifesto, Chantal Nedjib, Founder of l'Image par l'image, Christoph Wiesner, Director of the Rencontres d'Arles, and Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communication and CSR BMW Group France. He was accompanied in his selection for the second edition of the BMW ART MAKERS program by well-known personalities from the world of the arts: Fabrice Bousteau, Editorial Director of Beaux-Arts Magazine, Fannie Escoulen, Delegate for Photography at the Ministry of Culture and Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, writer and Deputy Editorial Director of Le Point.

The BMW ART MAKERS program will allow them to realize this project.
The particularity of this program is to associate an artist with a curator. The objective of this patronage is to highlight the complementarity of each to give birth to a large-scale project from the first thought to the final work. Alongside the artist, the curator acts as artistic director, scenographer, and consultant, and is responsible for ensuring that the project is carried out in accordance with artistic, time and budget requirements.

Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien's project on the future of the territories and the impact of human activity on the environment naturally finds its place in the BMW ART MAKERS program. The plurality of media used and the use of various technologies as a lever for innovation are at the heart of the BMW Group's strategy, which aims to produce a 100% recyclable and 100% recycled car by 2040," says Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communications and CSR, BMW Group France.

The applications and trends identified by the BMW ART MAKERS jury.
The pre-jury composed of visual arts professionals, Karin Hémar, journalist, curator, Fabrice Laroche, photographer, teacher coordinator at GOBELINS, l'école de l'image, Maud Prangey, coordinator BMW ART MAKERS, head of communication and marketing at IESA arts&culture, Louise Rivet, head of exhibition production at Paris Musées, Agnès Violeau, and Maryse Bataillard, head of corporate communication and CSR at BMW Group France, selected seven candidate duos from among 165 applicants who submitted a dossier containing a statement of intent, a budget and a timetable for production, a scenography proposal and images of their previous work.

The projects presented showed a great diversity of profiles and works. The applicants were composed of 49% of mixed duos, 36% of women duos and 15% of men duos. 43% of these duos were French, 57% international, coming from more than 27 countries around the world.

Major trends have emerged reflecting societal issues: many proposals have been made around the sacred, ritual and shamanism reflecting a quest for meaning and spirituality, the reappropriation of history in particular colonial and post-colonial, the environment with many projects around the impact of man on the planet, the use of technology including around Artificial Intelligence or virtual reality to link the archive and the future.

Eva Nielsen
Born in 1983, Eva Nielsen lives and works in Paris. A graduate of the Beaux-Arts de Paris, she is participating in the 16th edition of the Lyon Biennial (2022) as well as the 23rd Pernod Ricard Foundation Prize. She is the winner of the LVMH Métiers d'Arts residence in 2021. Eva Nielsen's work is constantly at the edge of something: at the threshold of the territory, of its center and its periphery, of the printed image and painting, of abstraction and figuration. From one horizon to another, from the format to the subject, the landscape predominates in her works.

Marianne Derrien
Born in 1981, Marianne Derrien lives and works in Paris. As an independent curator and art critic, she collaborates with museums and independent venues in France and abroad and regularly publishes critical texts on both emerging and established artists. Since 2020, she has been in residence at Wonder, an artist-run space in the Paris region, to carry out several exhibition and publishing projects dedicated to emerging creation.

Pre-selection of the jury for the BMW ART MAKERS program.

The jury auditioned 7 duos.  The nominees are:

• Eman Ali (artist) and Océane Sailly (curator) with the project Yunyu
• Andra Erodze (artist), Julia Marchand (curator) with the project Animale Mentale
• Ariane Kovalewsky (artist), Mélanie Wenger (curator) with the project Anthro-pie
• Eva Nielsen (artist), Marianne Derrien (curator) with the projectNumen inest or SpectroGéographies
• Joséfa Ntjam (artist), Clément Postec, Leonore Chirol (curators) with the project The Deep’s Tale / Le Conte des profondeurs
• Thomas Paquet (artist), Carine Le Malet (curator) with the projectPendulum
• Miji Yoon (artist), Sol Kim (curator) with the projectHutte, espace de Yeom Won