Gaëlle Choisne has been named the winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024. The prize—France’s most prestigious art award—includes a €35,000 ($38,100) grant and residencies at the Manufacture de Sèvres and the Villa Albertine.
Choisne was selected by an international jury of nine members, including high-profile museum directors and artists such as MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry, Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga, and Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, who won the inaugural prize in 2001. Alongside Choisne, this year’s nominees included Abdelkader Benchamma, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, and Noémie Goudal.
Choisne’s installation L’Ère du Verseau (The Age of Aquarius) (2024) is featured alongside work by the other nominees in the Prix Marcel Duchamp exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, which will be on view until January 6, 2025.
Since the Prix Marcel Duchamp was founded in 2000, the winning artist has been given up to €30,000 (in addition to their prize grant) to produce a body of work to be exhibited at the Centre Pompidou. Going forward, from 2025 to 2029, the Prix Marcel Duchamp exhibitions will take place at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris while the Centre Pompidou undergoes renovations.
Born in Cherbourg, France in 1985, Choisne studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Amsterdam and the Fine Arts School in Lyon, France. Her work often involves opulent installations reflecting on global issues, particularly regarding the ripple effects of colonialism, using materials and ideas she collects during her travels.
“Gaëlle Choisne embraces the fragility and experimental nature of her work, blending gravity and lightness through a host of multidisciplinary experiments that invite the viewer to engage with her installation,” said Xavier Rey, director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, in a press release. “Both erudite and vernacular, her work resonates with the tension it creates between the everyday and the extraordinary, between awareness of history and projection into the future.”
The artist, represented by Air de Paris, has been featured in major exhibitions worldwide, including the 2021 New Museum Triennial and in a 2022 solo exhibition at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Currently, her work is part of the Toronto Biennial and the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.
Last year, the Prix Marcel Duchamp was awarded to Palestinian Swedish artist Tarik Kiswanson, who was selected from a shortlist that included Bertille Bak, Bouchra Khalili, and Massinissa Selmani. Other recent winners include Mimosa Echard in 2022, Lili Reynaud-Dewar in 2021, and Kapwani Kiwanga in 2020.
