Women artists: performative works soon to join the collection

Over the past fifteen years, through acquisitions and commissions, the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) has built up a body of some thirty performance works that can be reactivated by means of instructions or protocols which it conserves. These works are completed by numerous videos, photographs and props that illustrate past or future actions.

In May 2020, in a context of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions and CNAP launched a joint call for submissions – La vie bonne – inviting women artists to respond to the crisis through original performative works.

Throughout these months of crisis, artists have been unable to go to their studios. They have found themselves cut off from their market and deprived of opportunities to show their work, leaving them more vulnerable and isolated. For these reasons, AWARE and CNAP decided to support women artists through this open call. The response was highly encouraging with 420 submissions which were examined by a review panel.

10 winners were chosen:

• Thérèse Ampe-Jonas (born 1944 in Paris, France)
• Eva Barto (born 1987 in Nantes, France)
• Fabiana Ex-Souza (born 1980 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil)
• Fallon Mayanja (born 1990 in Paris, France)
• Myriam Mihindou (born 1964 in Libreville, Gabon)
• Jeanne Moynot (born 1985 in Versailles, France)
• Anouchka Oler-Nussbaum (born 1988 in Saint-Malo, France)
• Famille Rester.Étranger 
• Eszter Salamon
• Louise Siffert (born 1988 in Strasburg, France)

The main criteria were artistic significance, the quality of the response, the feasibility of the project and its relevance to the CNAP collection. The panel also prioritised artists whose work had not yet been acquired by Cnap.

The panel members were: Dominique Gilliot, artist; Camille Morineau, director of AWARE; Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez, independent art critic and curator; Juliette Pollet, head of the visual arts collection at CNAP; Béatrice Salmon, director of CNAP and Matylda Taszycka, head of programming at AWARE.

The selected artists each receive €5,000. Production costs will be paid (on presentation of a provisional budget and price quotes) up to a maximum of €2,000 including VAT.

The selected projects will be shown on the AWARE website in autumn 2020 and will join the Fonds national d’art contemporain, the national collection of contemporary art which is managed by CNAP.

About AWARE

AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions was co-founded in 2014 by Camille Morineau to produce, distribute and catalogue content on twentieth-century women artists through partnerships with cultural institutions, universities and research centres. A non-profit organisation with international scope, AWARE’s main activities are to organise events that promote women artists, create a documentation centre, publish documents and books, and post daily updates to its website, which is entirely given over to twentieth-century women artists.