Beaux-Arts de Marseille, Marseille
Abdelkrim Benimam, Luisa Ardila Camacho
François Bret Prize
Beaux-Arts de Marseille (Fine Art College of Marseille)
The High public school for art & design Marseilles-Mediterranean – Les Beaux-Arts de Marseille has the pleasure to announce the first François BRET Prize.
The painter François BRET was the one who, as a director, convinced the municipality of Marseilles in the late 60’s to build the school on the Luminy area (located in the Calanques National Park in the south of the city).
Involved in the reform of art and architecture education in the seventies, he has been, for example, one of the first directors in France to give photography a proper place in an art school, by inviting Lucien Clergue (a famous french photographer from Arles, France) among others. He also welcomed the « Support/Surface » painters in the Art College and gave an opportunity to the famous sculptor César to teach there. It is under his direction that the school actually entered a new era. In 1976, the local youthful contemporary creation scene had an exhibition in the Museum of Modern Arts in Paris.
Giving the name of François BRET to this Prize doesn’t mean looking backwards but building a bright future on deep historical roots.
The François Bret Prize of the Fine Arts College of Marseille will be awarded each year by a jury of professionals to two young graduated of the College, one in art, one in design, who will be put in a spotlight during the Art-o-rama fair and will be coached by the members of the jury.
Former prize winners since 2012 (Art) :
– 2012 : Aldric Matthieu
– 2013 : Elsa Dessarps
– 2014 : Mountaincutters
– 2015 : Robin Touchard
– 2016 : Mahatsanga Le Dantec
– 2017 : Nina Tomas
– 2018 : no prize
First Award winners of the Prix François Bret: Luisa Ardila Camacho (art) and Abdelkrim Benimam (design)
This year, the jury members who accepted the invitation of the school are:
- Raphaëlle Segond, architect
- Delphine Borg, architect
- Marie-Christine Pailhas (François Bret’s daughter)
- Aurélie Berthaut (Galery art-cade)
- Michèle Sylvander (artist)
- Jérôme Pantalacci (director of art-o-rama)
- Adrien Lacroix (director of the department contemporary art Leclere, auction house and François Bret’s grandson )
- Jean-Noël Bret (historian of the art and François Bret’s son)
- Nicolas Veidig-Favarel (Double V Gallery)
Abdelkrim Benimam is a fresh design graduate from the “Ecole Supérieur d’Art et de Design” of Marseille and is presenting for the 10th edition of Art-O-Rama his projects which revolve around a vital commodity: water.
As a French-Algerian national, he has spent his life crossing both shores of the Mediterranean sea and has split his time between his beloved countries, France and Algeria. His intrinsic curiosity and cross-cultural perspective on identity have sharpened his observational skills and enabled him to critically assess the similarities and differences between the two countries. One major difference which struck Abdelkrim and marked his childhood and teenage period was the Algerian households’ access to water.
The value of water in Algeria, a country covered in its majority by the Sahara desert, coupled with the country’s particular context in the 1990s and 2000s as well as his family’s approach to this vital resource drove him to naturally place his research and focus around this precious commodity.
The projects that are presented aim to shed the light on the relationship that we have with water while also sparking a debate around the challenges that we will face in a not so distant future. The work that is exposed is inspired by real life experiences which have shaped the innovative objects that have been designed.
Luisa Ardila
Bogotá, 1990
“My artwork is about oil and acrylic painting. I use also photography and collage as leading tools for making still images. I compose my subjects with elements coming from a close entourage. The commonplace world inspires me. I take photos and videos of them to put a first distance between the real and me. It is a first projection screen. On the canvas the chosen elements become the fragments of a fictional set. I am fascinated by the geometry of habitat architectures and dressed characters. They are at the base of my pictorial vocabulary today.”