Emergence The ADIAF Émergence Grant is a support program for the international professional development of emerging artists and critics living and working in France. It is organized by the Association for the International Diffusion of French Art (ADIAF) with the support of Catawiki.

Launched in 2022, the ADIAF Emergence Grants is a support programme aimed at emerging artists and art critics living and working in France to help them with their international professional development. This art scholarship is organised by the Association for the International Development of French Art (ADIAF) in partnership with Catawiki (annual grants will be awarded on a individual financial basis of €1,500).

A new feature of the second edition currently being launched : the Emergence Grants are open to students from two art schools : the Villa Arson in Nice and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nantes-Saint-Nazaire, whose students or young graduates will be included by their teaching staff in the selection of grant holders.

• A Grant awarded to an “Art Critic and/or Curator (under 40 years old)”, whether individual or collective, of €1,500, selected by the ADIAF Emergence and Catawiki prior to the process ;
• Two grants for “Artists (under 40)”, whether individual or collective, of €1,500 each, awarded by a Jury ;
• Two grants “Art Schools”, wether individual or collective, of €1,500 each, awarded by a Jury on the basis of two pre-selections communicated respectively by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Nantes – Saint Nazaire and the Villa Arson Nice.

This Grant is awarded by a  Jury composed of two members from ADIAF, two members from Catawiki, and one or two prominent figure(s) from the French or foreign contemporary art scene, renowned for their independence and competence. The jury shall gather in the presence of the art critic/curator co-opted by ADIAF and Catawiki. The co-opted art critic/curator will attend as an observer.

Participants :

“Artist” applicants must meet the following criteria :

• Be under 40 years old on the date of submission of the application
• Have a connection with the French art scene : birthplace, study, residence or work location
• The applicant has never received a grant from this programme before
• “Artists’ collectives” are equally eligible as individual “Artists”

Candidates for the “Art School” grant are pre-selected by the art schools’ teaching staff and must meet the following criteria :

• Be a graduate or recent graduate of less than 3 years
• The applicant has never received a grant from this programme before
• “Artists’ collectives” are equally eligible as individual “Artists”

The “Critic / Curator” will be chosen by ADIAF Emergence and Catawiki together. They must meet the following criteria:

• Be under 40 years old at the time of his or her selection
• Have a connection with the French art scene : birthplace, study, residence or work location
• The applicant has never received a grant from this programme before
• Collectives of “Art Critics and/or Curators” are equally eligible as individual “Art Critics and/or Curators”

The organisers will work to promote a diversity of backgrounds, artistic universes, curator’s and critic’s practices and writing styles, as well as foster the renewal of representations within the associations of “Art Critics and/or Curators”

2023 EDITION – IMPORTANT DATES :

• December 9, 2022 : start of application submissions
• April 30, 2023 : closing of application submissions
• Mid May, 2023 : meeting of the jury
• Mid May, 2023 : announcement of the results

Applications are closed for the 2023 edition.

Download the terms and conditions HERE

Laureates of the 2022 edition of the ADIAF Emergence Grants – CataWiki

Amélie Bigard (who competed in the “Artists – Open Call” category)

Amélie Bigard develops an artistic practice that mainly takes shape through painting. In parallel to her studies at the École des Beaux-Arts de Marseille in 2018, she trained as an icon painter at the Church of the Dormition. She then spends a year in Berlin as an assistant of the painter Helen Verhoeven before pursuing her studies at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris-Cergy. In 2022, she had her first solo exhibition at the Consulat Voltaire in Paris and a second solo exhibition at the Studiolo gallery in Milan. She has been a resident at Therapeia Art Residency in Greece (2023), at the Artagon House (2022), at the Voltaire Consulate (2022) and at the Goldsmith’s (2021).

Born in 1997, lives and works in Paris

Graduated from the Beaux-Arts de Cergy in 2021

IG : @ameliebigard_

Elijah Ndoumbe (who competed in the “Artists – Open Call” category)

Elijah Ndoumbe is an artist, moving image creator, dream weaver, and collaborator. Her/His work is a mosaic of poetic, sensory and reality-based narratives of trans, queer, and racialized people from Turtle Island, South Africa, and the West ; and is a plea for gender justice and freedom. In her/his creative process Elijah engages all her/his senses, so the sensations of breath, body, space, desire, music and movement become key elements in the production of images.

Born in 1994 in Saint Germain-en-Laye (FR), lives and works between Paris (FR), Dakar (SE) and Los Angeles (US).

Graduated from Stanford University (US)

IG : @elijahndoumbe

Rebecca Topakian (who competed in the “Artists – Open Call” category)

After studying Philosophy and Geography, Rebecca Topakian turned to photography and pursued at the ENSP Arles the research that had already animated her in the human sciences : the definition of identity in its invisible dimensions in what it has of mythological or fictional. For Topakian, identity is articulated in a relationship between the political, the intimate and the poetic. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions in France and abroad, including the Rencontres d’Arles, the Villa Arson, and the Biennale de l’Image Possible. Her book Infra- was a finalist for the 2018 Rencontres d’Arles Author’s Book Award. In 2020, she was a finalist for the Virginia Prize and winner of the national commission Regards du Grand Paris 2020 from the CNAP and Ateliers Médicis. In 2021, she was the winner of the Fondation des Artistes’ Mécénat grant and the CNAP’s documentary photography grant, as well as the Blow Up Press prize and the Transverse grant. In 2022, she won the Fénéon prize, and her book Rouge Insecte, in duo with Araks Sahakyan, was published by Editions Sometimes. She is the winner of the national commission of the BNF and the Ministry of Culture “Radioscopie de la France…”. In 2023, her book Dame Gulizar And Other Love Stories will be published by Blow Up Press.

Born in 1989, French-Armenian artist

Lives between Erevan (AM) and Paris

IG : @rebitopi

Ambre Charpagne (artist who competed in the “Art School” category)

Sensitive to our time characterized by turmoil and landmarks losses, Ambre Charpagne is interested in affects, disrupted by several factors that she seeks to identify and understand. These intense sensations are marked by the feeling of a fall, of a loss of common sense and of the known world, which the Australian philosopher Glenn Albretch calls solastalgia, a form of suffering and psychic or existential distress especially linked to climatic disturbances and to the state of the relations that we maintain with the living and non-living world. Her artistic works develop a sound world composed of entities taken from her daily life that she associates with musical ritornellos composed and assisted by computer. Her installations are conceived with the help of digital devices, such as 3D animation or video, but also by sculptures that come with her performances where the voice and the piano are used as creative and narrative potentials.

Born in Bourges in 1997. Lives and works in Nantes.

Graduate of the School of Fine Arts Nantes – Saint-Nazaire.

IG : @ambre.chpg

Lassana Sarre (artist who competed in the “Art School” category)

Painter native of Vitry- sur-Seine. He first sneaked into the Beaux-Arts de Paris, the school where he studies today after graduating with honors from the Beaux-Arts de Nice, the Villa Arson. Describing his pictorial practice as figurative, he invests his external reality. Inspired by his family environment, colonial and contemporary issues, he paints portraits of his loved ones. Layers and sub-layers are apparent and testify to the progress of the idea. Historical, cultural and social identities lead him to push the limits and reflections of painting. He is interested in its format and its power. The scenes are real, but the disproportion seizes the attention. The painted figures are present, marked by very little symbolism, their expressive looks cross the canvas. His work has been exhibited at the Centre d’art contemporain Les tanneries, Amilly, and will soon be exhibited at the Magasins Généraux de Pantin.

Born in 1994. Lives and works in Paris

Graduate of the Villa Arson

IG : @anassal49

Anne Bourrassé (who competed in the “Art Critic/Exhibition Curator” category)

Anne Bourrassé is an independent curator and writer at the intersection of the visual arts and the humanities. She defines new exhibition formats conceived as experiences, frameworks for encounters and exchanges. Concerned with current societal issues, she defends an engaged and inclusive approach to curating. She is currently the director of the artistic programming of the cultural third place, the Consulat Voltaire in Paris and of the artists’ residence, La Folie Barbizon (77). In 2019, she co-founded the association Contemporaines to fight against gender inequalities in contemporary art, now based in Paris and Marseille. She graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Sciences Po Paris and studied at Cornell University, USA.

Born in 1991, lives and works in Paris

Graduated from ENSAD in Paris, Sciences Po Paris. Studied at Cornell University (US)

IG : @annebourrasse

Read the press release HERE

2023 Jury

Artist

Antoine D’AGATA, Photographer

Antoine d’Agata is a French subjective documentary photographer and filmmaker. At the age of 17, he interrupted his studies to live in the night world, through a dozen countries around the world. In 1991, he enrolled at the International Center of Photography (US), where he studied with Larry Clark and Nan Goldin. In 1993, he moved to France and worked as a builder and bartender until 1997, when he went back on the road and started shooting again. In 1998, his first books, “De Mala Muerte” and “De Mala Noche” were published. He was awarded the Niépce Prize in 2001, and has been a member of Magnum Photos since 2004. He has developed a photography based on the experimentation of the most marginal situations, transgressive, sharing the daily life and lifestyle of the great “excluded” of society.

Expert

Marine VAZZOLER, Journalist and art critic

A Journalist at L’Hebdo du Quotidien de l’Art since 2018, Marine Vazzoler studied art history at the Ecole du Louvre (FR) and then at the Ruprecht-Karls Universität in Heidelberg (DE), where she wrote a dissertation on the use of writing in Etel Adnan’s graphic work. She also graduated from the Master of Franco-German Journalism at the Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 (FR), and has written for the Journal des Arts, the culture section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (DE), Beaux Arts, and regularly produces exhibition texts for various galleries. At L’Hebdo, Marine Vazzoler conducts investigations, reports and analysis on subjects as diverse as ecology and sustainable development, accessibility of cultural institutions, art history research and the art market.

ADIAF representatives

Ronan GROSSIAT, General Secretary

Ronan Grossiat is a consultant in management and a collector. He is the General Secretary of ADIAF.

Ronan is committed to supporting the diversity of the French art scene and its international visibility, outside of market logic and speculation, notably through the production of projects for exhibitions in institutions, residencies or biennials. He has accompanied the launch of endowment funds dedicated to contemporary art and is behind the creation of ADIAF Emergence in 2018.

Ouissem BARBOUCHI, ADIAF member

Ouissem Barbouchi is the founding President of OBAFRICA AM, an investment structure for European clients in publicly traded companies in Africa. He has been based in Casablanca since 2014. His frequent travels have enabled him to discover the African art scene and to build a collection of a hundred works. Some of them have been loaned for exhibitions in France. Ouissem Barbouchi is also attracted to artists from the schools of Algiers and Tunis. He is a member of the ADIAF since 2022.

Catawiki representatives

Cyrille COIFFET, Art & Antiques General Manager

Cyrille Coiffet is Global General Manager for the Art and Antiques department of Catawiki, which he joined in 2015 as General Manager France.

Cyrille has 20 years of experience in large companies in the digital sector, and in particular within marketplaces.

Passionate about art, he acknowledges a preference for American Abstract Expressionism and contemporary Chinese photography.

Tatiana RUIZ, Contemporary Art Senior Expert and Curator

Tatiana Ruiz has been an expert in modern and contemporary art for two decades in prestigious auction houses and galleries.

She is fully involved in the research, coaching and management of young international contemporary artists – painters, sculptors, photographers – in order to support them in their development, valorization and promotion.

Observer member

Anne BOURRASSÉ, Art critic

Anne Bourrassé is an independent curator and writer at the intersection of the visual arts and the humanities. She defines new exhibition formats conceived as experiences, frameworks for encounters and exchanges. Concerned with current societal issues, she defends an engaged and inclusive approach to curating. She is currently the director of the artistic programming of the cultural third-place, the Consulat Voltaire in Paris and of the artists’ residence, La Folie Barbizon (77). In 2019, she co-founded the association Contemporaines to fight against gender inequalities in contemporary art, now based in Paris and Marseille. She graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris, Sciences Po Paris and studied at Cornell University, USA.

Laureates of the 2022 edition of the ADIAF Emergence Grants – CataWiki 

Prosper Legault (artist who competed in the ‘Specialization – Urban Art’ category)

Prosper Legault’s practice is situated on the edge of sculpture and poetry. From the remains of signs or urban furniture gleaned during his wanderings in the cities and suburbs, he produces three-dimensional collages. Prosper’s art transcribes globalization and its drifts, the way capitals digest and mix the objects and cultures from which they come. He introduces an everyday life that is usually not very visible in the exhibition space. In addition, he writes songs, which have been heard on Fip or Radio Nova, two mixtapes have been published under the label Red Lebanese. [Adapted from a text by Charlotte Cosson]

Born in 1994. Lives and works in Paris

Last solo exhibition at the project space of the Ruttkowski 68 gallery in Cologne in January 2022

Shivay La Multiple (artist who competed in the Contemporary Art category)

Through multiple media, the artist creates lines of escape towards new worlds. His research goes from the global to the visceral, from the macro to the micro, from dream to reality, from the physical to the digital. Currently, the artist is shaping an initiatory tale that begins in the Maroni River, then slides along the Congo River, sinks into the Senegal River and crystallizes at the confluence of the Rhone and the Saône. Going up these waters is the way to reach the source of the woody fruit.

Born in 1993. Lives and works between Paris, Nouméa in New Caledonia/Kanaky and the digital sphere.

In post-graduation at ENSBA Lyon. Her work has been presented in Mexico, Shanghai and at CIAP Vassivière.

Rayane Mcirdi (artist who competed in the Contemporary Art category)

“Rayane Mcirdi’s films are based on stories, memories and anecdotes collected from those close to him. He collects, by borrowing some gestures of the ethnographer, intimate words (always located in Asnières-sur-Seine and Gennevilliers, the area he has given himself), before translating them into video. Without ever disguising them, he then stages them, choosing their cinematographic setting, to draw the contours of a vast human mosaic that he proposes to discover in fragments.” Horya Makhlouf

Born in 1993. Lives and works in Paris

Last solo exhibition ‘Le croissant de feu’ at the Centre d’art – Galerie Édouard Manet, in Gennevilliers.

Chris Cyrille (art critic co-opted by the organizers, who participated in the jury as an observer and will lead the virtual conference)

Poet, art critic and exhibition storyteller: “The art critic must also learn to deviate (or de-mission) from the mission he or she has been given in order to create a ‘defining deviation’. His place is not that of the brightness of the white galleries, but that of the night of the workshops. He is the witness of the attesa of a work of art (we say ‘work of art’ to insist on this necessity to give to the artist a worthy status), that of the artist. Chris Cyrille

Born in 1993. Lives and works in Paris

Storyteller for the exhibition “But the world is a mangrove”. Winner of the AICA 2020 Prize. Participates in the podcast “L’esprit critique” of Mediapart.

2022 Jury

Expert

Ingrid Luquet-Gad, journalist and art critic

Ingrid Luquet-Gad is an art critic for the French and English press, in charge of the art section of Les Inrockuptibles, member of the editorial board of Spike Art Magazine and correspondent for Flash Art.

Her theoretical writings, deployed in the long time of essays and texts of catalogs, explore the ontological and epistemological transformations brought by the new technologies, as they are reflected in the magnifying mirror that artists hold up to the present times. She is currently pursuing a PhD in cultural studies and media theory at the University of Paris 1 Sorbonne and the University of Paris 8 Vincennes- Saint Denis, devoted to strategies of autonomy in the art of the 2010s.

ADIAF representatives

Ronan Grossiat, General Secretary

Ronan Grossiat is a consultant in management and a collector. He is the General Secretary of ADIAF.

Ronan is committed to supporting the diversity of the French art scene and its international visibility, outside of market logic and speculation, notably through the production of projects for exhibitions in institutions, residencies or biennials. He has accompanied the launch of endowment funds dedicated to contemporary art and is behind the creation of ADIAF Emergence in 2018.

Ronan is a member of the Contemporary Art Acquisition Group of the Centre Pompidou, has contributed to the Selection Committees of the Marcel Duchamp Prize, as well as to various juries such as DDESSINPARIS / Institut Français, Art Collector Entreprise or FRAC Bretagne Art Norac.

Nicolas Laugero Lasserre, Board Director

Nicolas Laugero Lasserre is director of ICART (the management school for culture and art market) and founding president of Artistik Rezo (Media, Club and Gallery). Member of the board of directors of the ADIAF, he was involved in creating the Young Collectors Department in 2014.

As an exhibition curator specialized in urban art, Nicolas Laugero Lasserre has organized more than 50 exhibitions over the past ten years around the movement, with public and private institutions; in 2019 he will co-author the “Que sais-je” on urban art. Passionate and a collector, his collection is since 2013 in permanent exhibition at the school ‘42’ (founded by Xavier Niel). He is co-founder and artistic director of the urban art center Fluctuart, a floating museum open to all, in front of the Invalides bridge in Paris.

Catawiki representatives

Cyrille Coiffet, Art & Antiques General Manager

Cyrille Coiffet is Global General Manager for the Art and Antiques department of Catawiki, which he joined in 2015 as General Manager France.

Cyrille has 20 years of experience in large companies in the digital sector, and in particular within marketplaces.

Passionate about art, he acknowledges a preference for American Abstract Expressionism and contemporary Chinese photography.

Tatiana Ruiz, Contemporary Art Senior Expert and Curator

Tatiana Ruiz has been an expert in modern and contemporary art for two decades in prestigious auction houses and galleries.

She is fully involved in the research, coaching and management of young international contemporary artists – painters, sculptors, photographers – in order to support them in their development, valorization and promotion.

Observer member

Chris Cyrille, art critic

Kriss, 2022 winner: Poet, art critic and exhibition storyteller.

Storyteller for the exhibition “— But the World is a Mangrovity”. Winner of the AICA 2020 Prize. Contributes to Mediapart podcast “L’esprit critique”.

Protocol:

The art critic must also learn to deviate (or resign), to get out of the mission given to him to create, there, a “determining deviation”. His place is not that of the brightness of the white galleries, but that of the night of the workshops. He is the witness of the attesa of a work of art (we say “work of art” to insist on this necessity to give to the artist a worthy status), that of the artist. Once the unjust moment of the judgment has passed, he can finally devote himself to the encounter.