Johanna Mirabel wins the 10th Révélation Emerige grant for young artists

The name of the tenth winner of the Révélations Emerige scholarship was announced on Tuesday, on the eve of the VIP opening of Paris by Art Basel, the major contemporary art fair at the Grand Palais Éphémère. Like every year, Laurent Dumas, the businessman and collector who created this initiative, launches this great ball of contemporary art with his prize which rewards a young French artist - this year all born, except one, in the 1990s - by offering him a workshop and the possibility of having an exhibition of his works in a gallery

There were 12 finalists – chosen from a thousand submissions! - presenting their works upstream in a former garage at 109, rue Lecourbe (Paris 15th) soon to be transformed into a building. In this panel less convincing than last year, Johanna Mirabel won. The artist born in 1991 in Colombes, living between Paris and La Rochelle, creates large formats, powerful in their framing or perspective, with large brush movements, juices, drips and transparencies. His interiors are animated with characters, often those of his family, in sometimes crude positions. They project the viewer into a strange atmosphere of red ocher tones, punctuated with flat blue areas. The scene violently catches the eye.

She is, by far, the best artist in the 2023 selection, curated by Gaël Charbeau. The artistic director of the last “A Summer in Le Havre” and the future Zac Olympic Village with “Manifesto”, gave it the title “Hit again”, with all the puns it entails. “Hits is all about the contradictory pressure exerted on young generations: to be part of the history of art while imagining a world of tomorrow that can still be represented,” he explains. Faced with the hit again of our climatic and social evolution, it is a generation which also knows that it can quickly be absorbed by fashion or the market.

This anniversary date allows us to take stock of the action taken by Laurent Dumas, the chairman of the supervisory board of the real estate developer Emerige, in favor of the French scene. Having remained on the fringes of the international scene for a long time, both from the point of view of the artists' notoriety and their rating, it has taken on real importance. But there is still much to be done to upgrade it. This type of scholarship is undeniably a springboard. Like the Pernod-Ricard foundation prize, whose winner of the 24th edition will be announced on October 20, or that of Sam Art Projects by Sandra Hegedus which is exhibiting its winner Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, since today, Tuesday, at the Palais de Tokyo. Immediately spotted, immediately taken into the stable of a good gallery. Like the Frenchwoman Ymane Chabi-Gara, finalist of the Révélation Emerige 2021 grant, who immediately joined Kamel Mennour and who “sold out”, from her first exhibition, at the Saint-Germain des Prés gallery owner .

The stakes for the candidates for this prize are not the least. They receive a financial grant of 15,000 euros, with a view to a first exhibition in a renowned Parisian gallery and support for their work, i.e. a one-year workshop at La Ruche. Obviously, we are returning to the traditional model of the gallery as a career lever, in a rapidly changing art world, where artists are turning to new platforms without necessarily a fixed exhibition space (CMS collection or Hatch_Paris ), incubators (Poush or Artgaon) or salons unearthing gems like the one in Montrouge and use social networks extensively to promote themselves.

Whether they are winners or not, this grant has a real visibility impact on their careers, especially since they will also be shown this winter at the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon (partner of the Villa Noailles) and at the French Institute of Madrid, during Arco, the Madrid contemporary art fair which has regained real momentum in Europe. Two new awards further strengthen this support for artists for 2024: a residency in the workshops of the Manufacture de Sèvres and a show at the Project Room, the new space on the Plateau Frac Ile de France. Johanna Mirabel will also benefit from an exhibition at Nathalie Obadia’s gallery. Without visibility, without support, a young artist cannot get by on his own.