art prize

Ten years into her art practice, Asya Marakulina likes to combine materials: installations, textiles, metal sculptures, graphics. Recently into ceramics and its endless possibilities, the artist developed series trying to understand how we influence each other and how we mold.

I notice poetic and aesthetic links of phenomena and go through my personal experience carefully observing myself and the world around me: the city, people, nature. Looking to find a visual language to express these links using various media, the artist creates temporal spaces that balance between the inner world of feelings and the real world of objects.

@asya_marakulina

Béatrice Guilleman studied sculpture at the Beaux-arts, then ceramics at La Cambre, before moving on to the European workshops Kult XL. She draws inspiration from architectural forms and ornamentation. From Brussels to Greece, via Brittany, the landscapes that surround her are a source of discovery and new forms.

@beatriceguilleman

Graduate of Goldsmiths University (Masters of Fine Art) and Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (Ireland), Camilla Hanney’s work incorporates ceramics, sculpture and installation. The artist's main themes are time, sexuality, cultural identity and the corporeal, often referencing the body in both humorous and challenging ways. By materialising the familiar in an unfamiliar context her work stimulates one’s ability to rethink their relationship towards objects, threatening the natural order and toying with the tensions that lie between beauty and repulsion, curiosity and discomfort, desire and disgust.

@camilla.hanney

Eleonore Griveau studied in France then in Norway where she lives. Her work reflects on a posthumanist era, displaying how body perception and materials are evolving alongside technology. Mixing ceramics and electronics, I create interactive installations that serve as reflections of human impact on contemporary ecosystems.

A recent installation, on Lascaux cave closed due to visitors' exhalations causing damage, captures visitors' breath and translated them into aggressive vibrations, causing the ceramic layers to slowly crumble. The projects combines organic and synthetic elements, integrating electronics into interactive ceramics installations to explore the evolving relationship between nature and technology.

@concreteeleonore

After studying art history at the École du Louvre and the Sorbonne, and then sculpture at New York University, Léonore developed a vocabulary of figurative forms centred on notions of intimacy, interiority and tenderness. She leaves clay untouched and adopts a craft-based approach, oscillating between the classical and the old-fashioned to address the notion of expectation linked to the feminine. ceramics is the material of archaeological digs, of proof, of trace, of permanence, it allows me to inscribe the everyday in the long term.The artist combines feminism with art history, artefacts and the museum setting. She also integrates personal elements, echoing the practice of diaries and miniatures historically associated with women.

@leonorechas

During her studies at La Cambre, Luna-Isola Bersanetti incorporated textiles into her designs in order to add flexibility to ceramics. She then spent six months at ALBA Beirut, in the fashion design department, to acquire technical skills in sewing, weaving and knitting. Attracted by live art, the incorporation of textiles allowed me to activate my creations through performances. The artist puts the emphasis on transmission, both in the reinterpretation of history and legends and in the enhancement of skills historically dominated by women.

@lunaisolab

After graduating in sculpture at La Cambre, Maëlle became interested in ceramics following an internship with Sofi van Saltbommel, and formalised her work with a Hisk post-master's degree. She questions progress through all eras and explores traces of decadence and possible hope. My work also deals with the destruction of ecosystems by man, as in the series of works ‘Jusqu'ici tout va bien’, 2022. In these installations, each piece is gradually subjected to programmed corrosion. Other installations deal with the freedom of seeds and microbial ecosystems as the primary source of life on earth.

@maelle.dufour
maelledufour.be

Somewhere between tradition and parody, Pascale Robert became interested in ceramics after studying at the Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, followed by a residency in Marseille. The material has become an integral part of her practice, materialising what the artist represented on canvas: she combines the culture of the party with the toil of the studio, using historical references to produce a joyful, playful work. The whole thing is based on photos of the people around her, friends enjoying a meal without constraints or protocol. I like to tease out folklore and culinary particularities. My catches are sometimes undignified, pareidolical, suggestive, grotesque, often irreverent. Underneath the nobility of the material, they gently offend good taste.

@pascale.robertpascale

As a student at HEAR and Adbk Munich, ceramics became an obvious choice for Pia Mougeot and her need for movement. Between practice and encounter, working together resonates and stimulates the artist. Pia's sculptures tell the story of affect, betting that reality is transformed by the way we tell it. The result of an obsession, or the enigmatic recycling of symbols, anecdotes and poetry, the sculptures are initially intuitive and free, like little theatres. Feminist issues dominate my narratives, with a Mediterranean tone and a practice of enamelling that is reminiscent of the ceramic culture of the south of France, where I grew up and which is not afraid of bad taste.

@piamougeot

Teacher and ceramics workshop manager, Raphaël is also a ceramic 3D printing instructor. Inspired by his reading, his practice breaks down the barriers between theoretical knowledge and technical practices by creating terracotta cases designed to house organic life forms. By combining tradition, technology and the natural sciences, the ceramics reflect on biology, while at the same time leading to speculative and dreamlike developments that position my practice at the heart of the paradigms of the contemporary world. The sculptures can be traversed by fluids, inhabited by plants or colonised by insects and bacteria.

@raphael.emine