1 - Marcel Duchamp Prize
Of French nationality, born in Morocco in 1974 at El Khnansa, Latifa Echakhch has lived in France since the age of three and grew up in the French Alps. A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts of Cergy-Paris and the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts of Lyon, the artist currently works at Martigny in Switzerland.
“The jury was appreciative of the manner in which Latifa Echakhch knows how to activate the potential of the space she is occupying by calling upon easily recognizable elements”, declared Alfred Paquement, President of the Jury. “Somewhere between surrealism and conceptualism, her work questions with economy and precision the significance of symbols and conveys the fragility of modernism. The artist does not coerce the viewer into making an obligatory reading of her works whose meaning remains open with any dogmatism.”
The artist was rewarded for her work as a whole which was presented to the Jury by her reporter, Rein WOLFS, Director of the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn. Elle follows after the duo Dewar & Gicquel and will be invited by the Centre Pompidou for a three month solo show in the autumn of 2014 in the 315 space. The ADIAF will award the winner a financial endowment of 35 000 euros and will participate in the cost of the exhibition’s production to the amount of 30 000 euros. Latifa Echakhch is represented by the Parisian gallery kamel mennour as well as by overseas galleries: kaufmann repetto in Milan; Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv and Galerie Eva Presenhuber in Zürich.
The announcement was made before a very large audience on Saturday, the 26th of October in Paris at the Grand Palais by Gilles FUCHS, President of the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF) and Alfred PACQUEMENT, Director of the Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou and President of the jury