BMW Group France announces the new winning duo of the BMW ART MAKERS Prize, its patronage program dedicated to the visual arts and contemporary images.

Artist Eva Nielsen and curator Marianne Derrien were selected by the jury for their project "SpectroGéographies".

BMW ART MAKERS supports, within the framework of its call for applications, an emerging visual artist duo and a curator who come together around a project.
• The project will be presented at Rencontres d'Arles in summer 2023 and at Paris Photo in November 2023.
• BMW Group France offers a grant of 10,000 euros to the artist, a grant of 8,000 euros to the curator, and a research and production budget of 15,000 euros, followed by the production of a solo show in Arles and at Paris Photo 2023.

The artist Eva Nielsen and the curator Marianne Derrien have been named winners of the second edition of the BMW ART MAKERS among the 165 applications that were submitted.

The artist-curator duo Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien convinced the jury with their project "SpectroGéographies". This artistic project, realized within the framework of the BMW ART MAKERS program, is a new experimentation resulting from their collaboration, conceived especially for the Rencontres d'Arles and Paris Photo. The jury was seduced by this poetic and scientific approach mixing images, painting and architecture to question the time and sedimentation of the urban and Camargue landscape (territory, geology, architecture) with the use of current digital tools. They evoke the mutations of the environment, which lead to the disappearance of certain urban, industrial and natural landscapes, where the imprint of the human is always in question. They will be particularly interested in the interzones between cities and countryside, spaces abandoned by some, playgrounds for others or even sometimes survival zones.

Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien on their nomination as the BMW ART MAKERS winning duo: "Being laureates of the BMW Art Makers, is for us the opportunity to activate this new project which invites us to renew the glance on a work sedimented by the image - hybridization between painting, photography and serigraphy. It is also the fact of testing the relationship between image, painting and architecture, always in dialogue with a space, a territory - living areas - shaped by the human hand that we wish to deepen in our project."

The BMW ART MAKERS program will allow them to realize this project.

The particularity of this program is to associate an artist with a curator. The objective of this patronage is to highlight the complementarity of each to give birth to a largescale project from the first thought to the final work. Alongside the artist, the curator acts as artistic director, scenographer, and consultant, and is responsible for ensuring that the project is carried out in accordance with artistic, time and budget requirements.
Eva Nielsen and Marianne Derrien's project on the future of the territories and the impact of human activity on the environment naturally finds its place in the BMW ART MAKERS program. The plurality of media used and the use of various technologies as a lever for innovation are at the heart of the BMW Group's strategy, which aims to produce a 100% recyclable and 100% recycled car by 2040," says Maryse Bataillard, Head of Corporate Communications and CSR, BMW Group France.

The applications and trends identified by the BMW ART MAKERS jury.

The pre-jury composed of visual arts professionals, Karin Hémar, journalist, curator, Fabrice Laroche, photographer, teacher coordinator at GOBELINS, l'école de l'image, Maud Prangey, coordinator BMW ART MAKERS, head of communication and marketing at IESA arts&culture, Louise Rivet, head of exhibition production at Paris Musées, Agnès Violeau, and Maryse Bataillard, head of corporate communication and CSR at BMW Group France, selected seven candidate duos from among 165 applicants who submitted a dossier containing a statement of intent, a budget and a timetable for production, a scenography proposal and images of their previous work.

The projects presented showed a great diversity of profiles and works. The applicants were composed of 49% of mixed duos, 36% of women duos and 15% of men duos. 43% of these duos were French, 57% international, coming from more than 27 countries around the world.

Major trends have emerged reflecting societal issues: many proposals have been made around the sacred, ritual and shamanism reflecting a quest for meaning and spirituality, the reappropriation of history in particular colonial and post-colonial, the environment with many projects around the impact of man on the planet, the use of technology including around Artificial Intelligence or virtual reality to link the archive and the future.

Further information in the press release to download