Région Sud Art Prize Showroom 2025
Since its begining Art-o-rama has been committed to participating in the professionalization of young artists and helping them network with different actors in the art scene : gallery owners, critics, collectors …
Through the Région Sud Art Prize funded by Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, this fair highlight yearly young creation from Art Schools of the Région Sud.
The Showroom section presents the work of 4 artist selected by a curator.The curator accompanies them in the presentation of their work, produces a critical text and introduces the artists to the gallery owners and publishers participating in the fair. They will then choose the Région Sud Prize laureate of the year.
The winner will be exposed next year in the main section of Art-o-rama after a two-months residency within the Moly-Sabata / Albert Gleizes Foundation. The artist will also receive a 2000 € production grant and a catalog will be published.
Since 2021, the artists of the Showroom benefit from a new residency program created by a regional network of art centers and venues from the Région. The 3 other artists will then each partake in one of the following residencies: Centre d’Arts Plastiques Fernand Léger de Port-de-Bouc, Centre d’Art Contemporain de Châteauvert et Voyons-Voir, art contemporain & territoire.
The Région Sud Art Prize is often a first experience for artists in a commercial event of international scope and allows the galleries participating in Art-o-rama to discover artists who where formed in our region. Furthermore it is a real platform of professionalization putting forward their work to a large public, as much amateur as professional. It is an opportunity for meetings, often sales and first collaborations with galleries.
The winner of the Région Sud Art Prize of 2024 is Cassandra Naigre who is Art-orama’s guest artist 2025.
Yasmine d’O. & Saâdane Afif – Curators 2025
Saâdane Afif (b. 1970, Vendôme, France) is a French artist with a conceptual approach who lives and works in Berlin. His work explores a variety of media (performance, objects, texts and printed materials) without fitting into any particular artistic category or discipline. Recent solo exhibitions include The Fountain Archives and Beyond…, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2021); The Fairytale Recordings, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris (2019); and This Is Ornamental, Kunsthalle, Vienna (2018). His work was presented at Documenta 12 (2007) and at the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2020, Saâdane Afif was awarded the Villa Aurora bursary. He wins the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2009) and the Prix Meurice (2015).
In 2025, Saâdane Afif will open one of his solo exhibitions at the Hamburger Banhof, Berlin.
Yasmine d’O. is an exhibition curator and publisher. Yasmine d’O. regularly collaborates with Saâdane Afif, whom she met on Jemaa el-Fna Square during the 5th Marrakech Biennal (2014). Recently, she curated Saâdane Afif’s exhibitions The Fountain Archives and Beyond…, Antoni Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona (2021); The Bonimenteur, FRAC Champagne-Ardenne, Reims (2022); The Coalman (2023), Galerie Mehdi Chouakri, Berlin; as well as the Bergen Assembly triennial, 2022. Yasmine d’O. is editor-in-chief of Side Magazine.
Selected artists for Art-o-rama’s Art Showroom 2025
Ix Dartayre
“A tripe shop, two stones
Three flowers, a bird
Twenty-two gravediggers, a love
The raccoon, a Mrs. So-and-so
A lemon, a loaf of bread
A broad ray of sunshine
A tidal wave, a pair of trousers
A door with its doormat”
— Jacques Prévert, Inventory (excerpt)
“Mnemosyne primarily offers an inventory of antique prefigurations that contributed, during the Renaissance, to shaping the style of depicting life in motion.
“
— Aby Warburg, in an introduction to his Atlas.
In 2021, Ix Dartayre reconstructed her bedroom in the basement of an art school,
transforming it into the site and setting for relational installations that lasted nearly two weeks. Closed to most visitors at first, the room was initially the stage for shared situations, which allowed the artist “to gather bodies that matter, then to reflect on how to capture their images, how to restitute, reenact, or activate them.
” Eventually, it was opened and exhibited, letting the public’s gaze reveal a rich installation inhabited by the intertwined stories and beings now attached to it.
In the installation Somewhere We Knew, specially arranged for Art-o-rama, the artist revisits the motif of the room—this time as a kind of inventory-room—where a variety of intimate objects, frames, and trinkets are gathered, often personalized by the presence of one or more photographs. “It is a fictive domestic space, porous and traversed by narratives, objects, images, and traces. Both stage and refuge, open yet enveloping, I imagine it as a space the visitor can observe from outside (like a decor) or pass through (as a space to explore, to inhabit),” Ix Dartayre tells us.
Thus, this room belongs to a long tradition of the room as a “mirror of the soul,
” as initiated by Jean des Esseintes in Huysmans’ À rebours, which later experienced unprecedented development in a much more “pop” form among postwar suburban American teenagers. Today, it is a near-sacred space, most often barred by a door, located at the end of corridors in apartments and houses across much of the world that has embraced the Western “way of life.” A “place of refuge, convergence of style and intimacy, portfolio of the self, ” as Clara Defaux emphasizes. Just as on the plates of Warburg’s Atlas, styles and forms collide on the
walls and floors of these biographical spaces, projecting as many identities as there are people who inhabit them.
Where Warburg’s inventory seeks to sketch a “representation of life in motion,” Ix Dartayre’s, room reminds us that the self, like artworks, can only be invented—in both senses of imagined and discovered—in the presence, real or imaginary, of the other and their gaze.
Yasmine d’O. Berlin, August 2025.
Juliette George
“There is a possibility of a literature that is beyond print and paper, and probably this is where I hope to be.”
– Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, TH 2058
“Where it smells of shit, it smells of being.”
– Antonin Artaud, In Search of Fecality (1948)
“Disaster, failure, flop, dud or bust, stumble, abort, crash, collapse, fall apart, break down, misfire, fall flat. – Informal: draw a blank, bomb, flop, fizzle out, miss, fail, sink. – Colloquial: go to shit, fuck up, go tits up.”
– Dictionary of Synonyms
Fiasco, flunk, flop, failure… With Feria & Foria, Juliette George invites us to follow her on a literary drift through the winding paths of failure. A subject sparked by a string of word associations and a few coincidences that Raymond Hains and his “Macintoshages” would likely have welcomed with a wink. Ever alert and attuned to signs, Juliette George began methodically mining her immediate experience as a young artist, invited for the first time to show her work at an art “fair” (feria), navigating from one rocky metaphor to another, towards the fear of “fucking up” (foria)—and eventually grounding herself—Eureka!—on the vast, uncharted territory of failure.
From foire (fair)—a periodic commercial event—to foirer (failure)—the negative outcome of an attempt—via to foirer (fuck up)—to have diarrhea; to malfunction, to fail disastrously—the writing was on the wall: her “showroom” would be a mess.
From then on, with the enthusiasm of someone who has good news to share, Juliette
George embarked on her quest, asking members of an informal, like-minded network to
recommend a book that, in their view, addresses the theme of failure. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Moby-Dick, Breviary of the Defeated, The Abyss, The Meteors… A first handful of titles emerged, each one a valuable marker on this uncertain map, forming the foundation of a rigorous, minimal in situ installation.
Three floor levels—echoing the three tiers of a winner’s podium—run across the full width of the four-by-four-meter booth assigned to her by Art-o-rama. Covered in brown carpet, they form a kind of platform. A bibliography, handwritten in pencil by the artist herself on a single blue-tinted A4 sheet, is pinned to the wall. More or less aligned below, a pile of books rests on the carpet. In one corner, the undefined presence of a back scratcher evokes the possibility of a literary form “beyond ink and paper, ” inviting the skeptical visitor to take a seat on this vessel and reflect not only on their own failures, but also on the far more alarming collective ones steering our world toward catastrophe—for avoir la foire (having the runs)
also means being afraid.
Yasmine d’O. Berlin, August 2025.
Rémi Lécussan
“Ah, if only we all had the extraordinary luck of relying on a clever artist to design our dovecotes, our homes, or the devices through which we send our messages!”
– Donna J. Haraway
“Beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissection table of a sewing machine and an umbrella. ”
– Lautréamont
Mimicry V, 2023 vs. Eye Wash Station, 2025
While flipping through Rémi Lecussan’s portfolio, my gaze pauses on a photo of a tall black structure rising in what appears to be a gallery exhibition space; in the background, a street is faintly visible. The caption beneath the title Mimicry V – 2023 reads: “Data-center patch panels, cuttlebone, millet.” Indeed, the oblong shapes of cuttlebones are clearly visible, their chalky white piercing the black wire mesh of the data-center racks like mineral ghosts. In one corner of the page, a close-up photo reveals a millet head, its warm hue glowing through the dark grid. As the work’s technical specs suggested, these racks have in fact been transformed into aviaries. All they’re missing are a few feathered tenants to liven up Art-o-rama’s hushed aisles with their song.
“Mimicry V”? But what exactly is this strange piece mimicking? What is it pretending to be? Does it speak of the end of a world? A kind of post-apocalyptic reallocation, perhaps? The anticipation of a degrowth era in which, cut off from electricity and networks, we revert to the good old days of carrier pigeons—whose legendary reliability, despite their somewhat sluggish pace, still rivals today’s fiber optics. The server racks, then, would have simply slid from one function to another in a logic of reuse.
A satisfying hypothesis—until it’s immediately challenged by a footnote from the artist:
“Server racks from a data center, where our data is stored, transformed into aviaries with millet and cuttlebone. Research aimed at expanding data storage capacity is now beginning to use DNA as a writing system.”
So, we are perhaps looking at a prefiguration of a symbiotic future between the biological and the technological. Knowing that five grams of DNA can theoretically store as much data as an entire data center, one struggles to imagine the massive volume of information that could be contained in a well-fed dozen of parakeets. The only thing left is to imagine the interface that would make this flow of information possible. Maybe a few droppings…?
There’s something in today’s technological promises—decidedly more science than fiction—that permanently channels surrealist imagination. As we might paraphrase Lautréamont: “Beautiful as the chance encounter, inside a data center rack, of pigeon DNA and information.”
And for anyone who still doubts what they’re seeing, the artist has placed, directly opposite his aviaries, the work Eye Wash Station—a “ready-made aidé” dedicated to the regardeurs (viewers) itself, that crucial interface through which we “make paintings.”
Yasmine d’O. Berlin, August 2025.
Léon Nullans
“One must act in front of a work of art, too. The attention we give to it is an action in itself. If I don’t, in my own modest way, compose the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin while I’m listening to it, I do nothing, I hear nothing. And if I don’t write The Brothers Karamazov while I’m reading it, I do nothing.”
— Jean Genet
An almost imaginary conversation between Karen Kilimnik and Yasmine d’O. about Léon Nullans
YdO: Dear Karen, let me first say how grateful I am that you agreed to come all the way to Berlin to talk with me about your work—and that of Léon Nullans.
KK: The pleasure is mutual, Yasmine. I’m delighted to chat with you—especially in this strange city that’s kept a bit of that spooky vibe I’m so fond of.
YdO: I also need to thank Léon, who gave me the opportunity to dive into your remarkable work. I must admit, I wasn’t very familiar with it before. But Karen, do you know Léon?
KK: I don’t believe I’ve ever met him. Who is he?
YdO: A “young French artist, fresh out of school.” He knows you very well—or at least, your work and he is deeply immersed in it. Did you know he just presented a body of work for his graduation, entirely inspired by your practice?
KK: I’m flattered! But tell me more.
YdO: He said: “Kilimnik is now central to my work, not just as a proper name or simple reference, but as a direct marker that challenges the notion of aesthetics in my research. ”
KK: That’s a bit abstract… if I may say so.
YdO: Well, the show included a very scatter art-like installation on a grey pedestal, large watercolor murals you likely wouldn’t disown, a few photographs. And scattered throughout—nests. Everything pointed back to your work, and yet…
KK: There’s almost a childlike playfulness to it—like one of those games: “Let’s pretend I’m…Karen Kilimnik.”
YdO: (laughs) Yes! Like one of those mimicry games children use to build themselves up by stepping into other imaginations?
KK: Exactly—it’s as if Léon is slipping into a costume. And from what you’ve described, there’s something theatrical in it… Has my work become a set?
YdO: You’re right—he might be embracing a role for which you and your work are the costume. Which isn’t so far, after all, from those female figures you’ve painted so often—those alter egos with multiple personalities, placed in various times and settings, through which you expressed something of yourself. Borrowed inheritances you used to define yourself.
KK: Perhaps I’ve become an alter ego myself? (laughs) Yes… That’s what you call in French “l’ironie du sort.” You’ll say I brought this on myself, won’t you? Maybe it’s just the beginning—maybe I’m only the first link in a long chain of artist-alter-egos yet to come for Léon.
YdO: Beyond the understandable desire to place oneself within a given history or artistic community, don’t you think that revealing oneself through another is a kind of modesty? A veil that shields the artist’s deeper feelings—and raises that eternal question of sincerity? It reminds me ofthat beautiful scene in Tarkovsky’s Stalker, when the characters finally reach the wish room—the ultimate goal of their quest—and realize the room will fulfill only their most deeply hidden desires. No one dares to enter, afraid of what they might discover about themselves…
KK: …Yes, for any artist, a work is like that room—all wishes are allowed—but it also exposes what is hidden inside us, our obsessions. And yet, one must take the risk of creating meaningful work… one must expose oneself to the risk of making a true artistic (or intellectual) statement. (laughs) Maybe this kind of strategy is also a way of dodging our old friend, the ego—that necessary engine of action, but sometimes such a burden, even a hindrance? So what has Léon planned for the upcoming presentation at the Art-o-rama Showroom?
YdO: Well, you’ll be surprised—he’s doing it again. This time, he wants to focus on creating a series of nests. Nests in your style, of course, which he plans to make with his aunt.
KK: If I may… the bird is feathering his…
YdO: …Nest, yes. It is rather strange that he chose nests for this exhibition—and even more so that he asked his aunt—who’s into crafts—to co-create them with him. I’m not entirely sure how to interpret that. It’s almost regressive: “back to the nest, with auntie.” But then, you yourself have kept something adolescent in your work…
KK: You know, anything has the potential to become something else. And surely my nests—or rather, these nests remade by Léon and his aunt, invoking me like some sort of pagan deity—take on a whole new meaning in the violent climate of the 2020s. In any case, I’m curious to see.
YdO: Léon proposed a title for this presentation: a simple “Nests by Karen Kilimnik”, an exhibition by Léon Nullans. What do you think?
KK: (laughs) Yes, that sounds perfect. Says it all.
In the early 1990s, Karen Kilimnik began creating installations belonging to the genre of American scatter art: found objects, assembled and scattered across the floor in a way that appears random, with no particular formal intent.
This conversation took place in Saâdane Afif’s studio in Berlin, August 2025.
