The Marcel Duchamp Prize has been awarded to Tarik Kiswanson, announced the organisers, Adiaf (Association pour la diffusion internationale de l'art français) and the Centre Pompidou. The prestigious €35,000 prize is awarded each year to a contemporary artist. It provides a springboard and can be awarded in all plastic and visual fields (installation, video, painting, photography, sculpture, etc.), encouraging new artistic forms.
Born in 1986 in Halmstad, Sweden, Tarik Kiswanson works and lives between Paris and Amman, Jordan. He comes from a Palestinian family who had to leave their country for North Africa and then Jordan, before arriving in Sweden in the early 1980s. His work encompasses sculpture, writing, drawing, performance, film and sound, exploring issues of memory and heritage, temporality and belonging, and transformation and metamorphosis more broadly.
In his new installation for the Marcel Duchamp Prize, he returns to his works entitled Nest, monumental cocoon-like sculptures that allude to states of transformation in nature (chrysalises, eggs or seeds), where he "explores forms and states derived from the experience of war, trauma and displacement", according to the organisers.
Photo: copyright Duchamp/Centre Pompidou.