Region Sud Art Prize
Since its beginnings, Art-o-rama has been committed to participating in the professionalization of young artists and allowing them to encounter different actors of the art world – curators, gallery owners, critics, collectors…
Each year with the Région Sud Prize, Art-o-rama offers visibility to the young creation from Art Schools of the Region Sud, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. The Prix Region Sud Art is aimed at artists who have graduated within the last 5 years from one of the art schools of Region Sud.
The Showroom section highlights the work of 4 artists 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, who will then be invited to vote for the winner of the Region Sud Prize of the year.
The following year, this artist will benefit from an exhibition space in the Gallery section of Art-o-rama following a two-month residency within the Moly-Sabata / Albert Gleizes Foundation. The artist will be the recipient of a 2 000 € grant and a catalog will be published.
Since 2021, the Showroom artists 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 Region Sud Prize often stands as a first experience for artists in a commercial environment of international scope and allows the galleries participating in Art-o-rama to discover artists who were formed in our region. 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 laureate of the Region Sud Art Prize 2023 is Théophylle Dcx.
To apply to the Région Sud Art Prize, please send us by email to contact@art-o-rama.fr a pdf file of 15 pages maximum specifying your participation in the Prix Région Sud in Art before February 29th 2024. The file should be in English and include :
– a biography
– a presentation of your practice
– captioned images
Rules of the Région Sud Art Prize (in French)
Francesco Tenaglia, 2024 Curator
Francesco Tenaglia is an educator in criticism and art theory at Bauer and the Nuova Accademia delle Belle Arti (NABA) in Milan. He is an independent curator and co-founder and artistic director at the exhibition space, Sgomento Zurigo, based in Zurich. His writings have been featured in various publications, including Flash Art, Frieze, ArtReview, Mousse (where he served as editor-in-chief), and Spike (where he holds the position of contributing editor).
Théophylle Dcx, 2024 guest artist
Théophylle Dcx (born in Saint-Étienne in 1996) is an artist living and working in Marseille.
Since his studies at the Villa Arson, Nice, which he completed in 2022 with the congratulations of the jury, Théophylle Dcx has developed a practice that spans text, performance and video. His work focuses on the body, both formally and theoretically, as a site traversed by societal and political pressures. His own identity as a queer, seropositive sex worker takes on a central place throughout his practice in exploring such systemic forces.
Reminiscent of the work of French writer and filmmaker Guillaume Dustan, his texts and videos take on a humorous nonchalance, used as a tool of subversion and emancipation against the wider reality at play. The introspective and diaristic quality found in such works contrasts with other wider elements of his practice. The collective experience of dance within the queer community, seen in many of his performances and films, is understood as a means to help shape a sense of solidarity and resistance against wider normative pressures that govern today’s society.
His work has been presented in institutions in France and internationally such as Les Sillons, Centre d’Art Contemporain La Ferme du Buisson, Noisiel (2023), 100% La Villette, Paris (2023), In memory of my feelings, Parallèle La Relève 5 x Château de Servières Marseille (2023), VIH/sida L’épidémie n’est pas finie!, Mucem x Manifesto XXI x Artagon, Marseille (2022), Argent facile, Forde, Genève (2022), The Films of Guillaume Dustan (2000-2004), Fri Art Kunsthalle, Fribourg (2021).
He has been awarded various residencies such as Palais de Tokyo and Centre Maurice Chalumeau en Science des Sexualités, Genève (2023) and Artagon Marseille (2021-2022).
The publication of his book Rose2Rage is expected by Burn-Août editions in 2023.
Text by Juliette Desorgues, 2023 Curator
Previous guest artists
2023 HaYoung
2022 Flore Saunois
2021 mountaincutters
2019 Jonathan Vidal
2018 Delphine Wibaux
2017 Sabrina Belouaar
2016 Rafaela Lopez
2015 Vincent Ceraudo
2014 Sergio Verastegui
2013 Yann Gerstberger
2012 Caroline Duchatelet
2011 Sandro Della Noce
2010 Pascal Martinez
2009 Émilie Perotto
2008 Julien Bouillon
2007 Arnaud Maguet et Olivier Millagou
Region Sud Design Prize
In the continuity of the Région Sud Art Prize, Art-o-rama implemented in 2022 the Region Sud Design Prize which highlights young designers of the region and participates in their professionalization.
The Region Sud Design Prize is aimed at designers who have graduated within the last 5 years and who have completed part of their studies in the Southern Region, Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur, or who live in the region. Designers will be selected by a curator to be shown in a dedicated space during Art-o-rama.
The winner will be selected by a jury of professionals during Art-o-rama and will benefit from a 2 000 € grant, an exhibition space during the next edition of the fair, and a collaboration with the Centre Wallonie Bruxelles and the Design Museum Brussels.
The laureate of the Region Sud Design Prize 2023 is Studiolow.
To apply to the Région Sud Design Prize, please send us by email to contact@art-o-rama.fr a pdf file of 15 pages maximum specifying your participation in the Prix Région Sud in Design before February 29th 2024.
Ghassan Salameh will be looking out for designers who see their practice as their profession, or who wish to advance and develop their careers from a design- and craft-centred perspective. In addition, the curator will be attentive to candidates who are aware of the ecological impact of their production, adopting a working approach centered around responsible design.
The file should include :
– a biography
– a presentation of your practice
– captioned images
Rules of the Région Sud Design Prize (in French)
Ghassan Samaleh, 2024 Curator
Ghassan Salameh, trilingual design curator, creative consultant and cultural facilitator, holds an MA in European Design Labs from IED-Madrid. Currently based in Marseille, he is the founder of “Madar.design”, a metamorphic and adaptable cultural agency dedicated to offering equal dissemination opportunities to creatives and artists by proposing unconventional performance formats. His self-taught practice focuses on cultural programming and curation in design, architecture, urban planning, public space interventions and transdisciplinary design research.
Before devoting himself to curation, Ghassan founded a design studio (2012-2017) specializing in lighting and spatial design, exhibited at several international design fairs. He was also exhibition director at the Beirut Art Center in 2014-15.
For his curatorial work, Ghassan orchestrated, in 2018 an engaged collective edition of Beirut Design Week’18, on the theme “Design & the City”, and in 2020 and 2021 Dubai Design Week as artistic director, organizing exhibitions focused on research and experimentation in design and architecture, as well as the creation of cities. In 2023, he curated a SWANA design collection at Dukkan42, at the 421 Arts Center in Abu Dhabi, and the research exhibition of creative industry ecosystems in Lebanon called “Under Design Lebanon”, which took place at Salone Del Mobile 2023 in Milan.
Ghassan also works as a cultural consultant, developing cultural strategies and programming for public cultural institutions, such as for the British Council in Beirut in 2022, where he set up a capacity-building and critical thinking workshop for emerging visual artists in Lebanon, and in 2019, with “Fantasmeem”, a designer education and training program in collaboration with the Goethe-Institut Lebanon. He was also Senior Strategy Consultant for the UAE Ministry of Culture and Youth (December 2022 – June 2023) and Senior Researcher at the IED Research Center for the New European Bauhaus project (April – July 2023). In March 2023, he contributed as a design researcher to the Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council publication “Architecture of Culture”.
Throughout his career, Ghassan has organized and produced over 40 art and design exhibitions, directed three design festivals, and collaborated with over 250 designers, artists, architects and cultural institutions from the Middle East and beyond, leaving an indelible mark on the international creative landscape.
Studiolow, 2024 guest designer
Studiolow is a research and creation studio based in Marseille, co-founded by artists Héloïse Charital and Ismaël Rifaï in 2018 following their studies at the Design Acadmey Eindhoven. Their approach straddles the border between contemporary design art and documentary research. This work essentially takes the form of installations in which experimental videos akin to amateur documentaries, forms of mapping and sculpture-objects shaped by assembly logics rub shoulders.
Influenced by Victor Papanek’s idea of social design, the Italian radical movement of the 1970s and the contemporary research of artist-researchers such as Ernesto Oroza on popular creativity, they seek to understand and critically analyze vernacular forms of design. Through the position of artist-researcher, they privilege long periods of research and investigation into social and cultural subjects, in order to develop a form of anthropological design. The analysis of these situations through the eyes of artists and the tools of designers then materializes in narrative objects. More than a simple transposition or demonstration, this methodology works to consider informal techniques and situations as potential models.
Gradually, the duo began to focus their research on the notion of movement. The subject of this research is in turn human or animal migration, the displacement of bodies and knowledge. These different explorations have given rise to a fascination for the growth of human and animal creativity in situations of constraint. Since then, their work has focused on documenting these techniques of disobedience and hijacking, and using their design principles.
The Région Sud Art & Design Prizes are supported by Région Sud Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur
The Région Sud Art Prize catalog is supported by the Conseil Départemental des Bouches du Rhône
