Louis Roederer Discovery Award 2021
Exhibition curator: Sonia Voss
Église des Frères-Prêcheurs, Arles, France
Since its creation, the Rencontres d'Arles has promoted photography and all its stakeholders, from photographers to artists, curators and publishers. With this in mind, the Rencontres d'Arles associates the Louis Roederer Discovery Award with all exhibition spaces. Through their trailblazing work, galleries, art centers, non-profits, independent venues and institutions are often the first to support emerging artists. The 11 shortlisted projects will be on display at the next Rencontres d'Arles. During opening week, a jury will bestow the Louis Roederer Discovery Award, which comes with an acquisition worth €15,000, upon an artist and the project’s supporting organization. The public will vote for the Public Award, which carries with it an acquisition worth €5,000.
The Louis Roederer Discovery Award aims to be more inclusive by opening its selection process up to all exhibition venues in addition to galleries. This year, 11 shortlisted projects will be featured in a single show curated by Sonia Voss. She and scenographer Amanda Antunes will innovatively and ecologically showcase the emerging scene at one of the festival’s signature sites, the Église des Frères-Prêcheurs.
Marie Tomanova
It Was Once My Universe
Presented by Pragovka Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
It Was Once My Universe is the autobiographical story of a homecoming. Returning from New York to her native Mikulov, a Czech village in South Moravia, and to her family’s farm after a decade of absence, Tomanova documents her reunion with loved ones. And yet a disquieting strangeness dominates the atmosphere. The house she missed so much—reminisced about, fantasized, took imaginary refuge in during the most difficult moments of exile—has become an unfamiliar frame, disjointed, in which she no longer has a place. She experiences all the more forcefully the feelings of disorientation and loss of identity, closely tied to her uprooting, because they now inform the “homecoming” she has so long looked forward to. This series extends the artist’s exploration of the genre of the self-portrait. The camera’s date stamp reminds us of time, the moment when the photograph was taken, which, given so precisely here, contrasts sharply with the murky time of memory.
With support from the Louis Roederer Foundation, Polka, the Czech Center Paris, Fotonova, and the town of Mikulov.