Lorna Simpson Mentor 2023
Each year, Reiffers Art Initiatives invites a major figure of the contemporary art world to become the mentor of an emerging artist of the French scene. The mentor chooses the laureate of the mentorship program among the selection of emerging artists proposed by the artistic committee. This mentorship will give rise to an exhibition during the Paris+ by Art Basel.
Mentor 2023
Lorna Simpson
Simpson’s early work—particularly her striking juxtapositions of text and staged images—raised questions about the nature of representation, identity, gender, race and history that continue to drive the artist’s expanding and multi-disciplinary practice today.
She deftly explores the medium’s umbilical relation to memory and history, both central themes within her work. Her most iconic works from this period depict African-American figures as seen only from behind or in fragments. Photographed in a neutral studio space, the figures are tied neither to a specific place nor time. Drawing upon a long-standing interest in poetry and literature, the artist accompanies these images with her own fragmented text, which is at times infused with the suggestion of violence or trauma.
The incredibly powerful works entangle viewers into an equivocal web of meaning, with what is unseen and left unsaid as important as that which the artist does disclose. Seemingly straightforward, these works are in fact near-enigmas, as complex as the subject matter they take on.
Young talent Mentorship 2023
Gaëlle Choisne
Among the selection of young talents proposed by the artistic committee, she chose to support the French artist, Gaëlle Choisne
In her practice, the legacy of colonialism and, more generally, the question of domination are recurrent. It's a subject that the artist has mastered and carries in her flesh. The artist likes to interweave intellectual and artistic disciplines. Singing, music, sculpture, videos, debates and voodoo rites... Seven stages, seven moments to recall this tragic history and its links with contemporary times.
The program
THE MENTOR
The mentor shares his or her experience and advice with the young talent in an ongoing intergenerational dialogue.
The 2022 selection of the 10 emerging artists is made exclusively by the members of the artistic committee, and the final choice of the winner of the "Mentor and Young Talent" program is made by the mentor.
THE YOUNG TALENT
Each year, the members of the artistic committee present the mentor with a selection of young artists whose visual and conceptual work has caught their attention.
During the mentorship, which lasts several months, the mentor dialogues with the selected artist about their respective practices, in an effort to open up and share artistic know-how.
THE EXHIBITION
The result of the work done under the mentorship is visible in the form of an exhibition presented each year in Paris in October, during the Paris+ Art Basel.
The Paris+ by Art Basel is a key moment in Paris, bringing together major players in contemporary art, to present and showcase the creations of the mentorship laureate.