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Artist duo JOANA HADJITHOMAS and KHALIL JOREIGE have received the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2017 for their mixed-media installation Unconformities (2017). Courtesy The Third Line, Dubai.
The Prix Marcel Duchamp 2017 has been awarded to artist duo Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige for their work Unconformities (2017). They will receive a cash prize of EUR 35,000 (USD 41, 000).
Hadjithomas and Joreige were both born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1969 and currently live between Paris and Beirut. The duo create works that examine the representations of their home country in local and international contexts; their moving images often comprise appropriated materials and blur the boundary between reality and fiction.
Hadjithomas and Joreige’s winning mixed-media installation is part of their investigation into “the writing of history and the construction of imageries,” according to the artists’ statement. Referencing subsoil sampling techniques, which allow archaeologists to uncover the many heterogeneous layers that comprise the ground, they endeavor to represent history as “a sequence of ruptures and torsions entailing the mixing together of traces, of ages and civilizations.”
Installation view of JOANA HADJITHOMAS and KHALIL JOREIGE’s winning work, Unconformities (2017), at the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2017 exhibition, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2017. Photo by Audrey Laurans. Courtesy Centre Pompidou.
Prix Marcel Duchamp was established in 2000 by the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, to honor “a French artist or artist residing in France, representative of his or her generation,” according to the association’s statement. The prize is named after Marcel Duchamp as a tribute to his artistic innovations.
The other nominees for this year’s award were Maja Bajevic, Charlotte Moth and Vittorio Santoro. The jury included Bernard Blistène, director of the Centre Pompidou; Gilles Fuchs, president of ADIAF; Carmen Gimenez, curator at the Guggenheim Museum in New York; Erika Hoffmann, founder of the Sammlung Hoffmann Collection in Berlin; Mao Jihong, president of fashion label Exception de Mixmind and Fang Suo Commune bookstore in Guangzhou; curator Jérôme Sans; and Akemi Shiraha, representative for the Marcel Duchamp Association. Previous recipients include Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Tatiana Trouvé, Cyprien Gaillard, Latifa Echakhch, Julien Prévieux and Kader Attia.
Hadjithomas and Joreige’s Unconformities will be on view at the Centre Pompidou along with works by other finalists until January 8, 2018.
Helena Halim is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
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