THE ARTISTS NOMINATED FOR THE 2026 COAL PRIZE

Elena Bajo imagines a sensory garden composed of nocturnally flowering plants – wild tobacco, four-o’clocks, evening primrose, night-blooming jasmine and night-flowering cacti – which become active in the darkness, with visitors finding their way through smell and sound. Moths, bats and beetles, essential actors within these nocturnal ecosystems, also become the subjects of action research conducted with naturalists. The work takes the form of a participatory moonlit performance centred on nocturnal pollinators. By defending the ecological continuity of darkness, the artist invites us to preserve the “discreet grammar” of the living world: one of scents, lunar rhythms, animal movements and ancient forms of knowledge that the night continues to shelter.

Born in Madrid in 1976, she lives and works between Spain and the United States. A transdisciplinary artist and 2026 Guggenheim Fellow, Elena Bajo creates environments described as “anarchoreographies”, combining sculpture, performance and poetry to explore plant intelligence and marginalised cosmologies. Her recent exhibitions include Manifesta 15, the Lyon Biennale and Performa, and her work has been recognised through the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Audemars Piguet Award.

Amélie Bouvier explores the contemporary transformation of the night sky in an age of proliferating satellites. Composed of modules made from metal, wood and bio-based materials, her sculptural and sonic installation, conceived as a sensory observatory, translates human activity in space into rhythms and vibrations. Each activated module makes the presence of objects in orbit perceptible: communication, observation and navigation satellites, scientific satellites and space debris. Inspired by archaeoastronomical architectures, the work explores how these transformations of the sky are reshaping our cosmological imaginaries and our relationship with the Earth.

Marielle Chabal is developing a speculative documentary about Gaïanita, a fictional laboratory island where darkness provides the basis for another form of education in the living world: cooperative, libertarian and ecofeminist. Here, the night becomes a political condition that makes it possible to escape generalised transparency, surveillance and the extractivism of the gaze. Learning to inhabit the shadows means learning to perceive and think differently about less dominant forms of organisation. Combining analogue archives, Hi8 and VHS-C footage, LiDAR captures, 3D modelling and soundscapes, the project uses fiction as a critical tool for challenging official narratives of progress.

Born in France in 1988, she lives and works in Paris. A transdisciplinary artist and doctoral researcher, she develops “foundational fictions”: hybrid formats bringing artists and scientists together to collectively experience desirable futures. Through role-play and immersion, Marielle Chabal approaches storytelling as a consciousness software capable of transforming the social and political sphere. Winner of the Audi Talents Award for Al Qamar, her work has notably been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, the Centre Pompidou and through the international network of her gallery, Alberta Pane.

The duo G&K imagine an artistic and participatory project addressing the disappearance of fireflies and the fragility of natural nocturnal light. Against the backdrop of insect decline and light pollution, the project invites us to consider bioluminescence as a sensitive indicator of the health of nocturnal environments. It aims to create “Oases of Wild Light”, places where, in collaboration with scientists, the conditions for the respectful reintroduction of endemic fireflies into territories where they have disappeared would be studied. This ecological gesture becomes a collective ritual involving local inhabitants and scientists, turning wonder into a form of attention and responsibility.

The G&K duo is formed by Katarzyna Kot (Poland) and Stéphane Guiran (France), who live and work in France. Since meeting at the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire in 2022, the duo has developed a shared artistic practice focused on listening to the living world and seeking new ways of inhabiting the Earth, in dialogue with the concept of the Symbiocene. In 2023, they founded the Grands Vivants association, affirming their commitment to taking concrete action for the ecosystems they study. In 2026, they initiated a new work on the Danube, which will be presented from 2028 onwards.

La Bête noire explores the ambivalent figure of the wild boar, once a mythical hero and now perceived as a pest, through a speculative animated film unfolding over the course of a single night. In this nocturnal immersion, somewhere between memory and hallucination, a human being, implanted with an animal memory, enters the dream of a group of suids travelling through forests and urban areas. The work takes the form of a textile pavilion evoking medieval hunting scenes, housing sculptures and drawings made with natural pigments. Connecting ancient imaginaries with ecological urgencies, the project transforms the night into a space where an obscured form of wild intelligence can emerge.

Born in Marseille in 1997, where she lives and works. A graduate of the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris and Le Fresnoy, Lou Le Forban develops a practice combining film, painting and textiles, drawing on real and fictional narratives rooted in the medieval marvellous. Her work has been exhibited at FRAC Île-de-France, the Grande Halle de la Villette, the LaM and the Musée national du Moyen Âge de Cluny.

ámbar luna approaches the night as an environment that transforms perception, the body and the imagination, where vision gives way to other forms of attention: tactile, auditory, proprioceptive and affective. The project builds on NOCTURNA. Night Walks for Women, a series of nocturnal walks by women in Mexico aimed at reclaiming public spaces that are poorly lit at night. It unfolds along three axes: a somatic exploration of darkness; an astronomical imagination inspired by constellations as ancestral forms of orientation and collective storytelling; and the creation of nocturnal journals as living archives of perception. Here, the night becomes a territory for ecological, sensory and political reclamation.

Born in Chiapas, Mexico, in 1988, she lives and works in Weimar, Germany. A dancer and choreographer, ámbar luna develops artistic processes at the intersection of choreography and the night as a sensory and political territory. Her work is rooted in research-creation exploring relationships between the body and space, architecture and collective artistic practices. Her work has been presented at numerous international festivals. She is currently completing a Master’s degree in Public Art at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar (Germany).

Marie-Luce Nadal is interested in elusive phenomena that only appear after nightfall: luminous sprites above storm clouds and hypnagogic forms generated by the brain when sleep eludes us. Her installation brings together infrared images, drawings produced through altered sleep experiments, dream-memory blankets and sculptural pillows. At the intersection of art, atmospheric phenomena and sleep neuroscience, she presents the night as an active space in which the invisible is revealed, where electrical, neuronal and poetic forms of life emerge.

Born in Perpignan in 1984, she lives and works between Aubervilliers, Paris and Perpignan. Trained as an architect and pyrotechnician, Marie-Luce Nadal’s work explores atmospheric dynamics and climate manipulation through immersive installations combining art and science. Her work has been presented at the Palais de Tokyo, the Lyon Biennale, Fondation Fiminco, La Patinoire Royale Bach, the Gaîté Lyrique and Nuit Blanche 2026. She was awarded the Opline Arts Prize in 2025.

The nomasmetaforas collective imagines collective dream workshops centred on mugwort, a plant associated with dreams, protection, popular knowledge and women’s medicinal traditions. Emerging from a dialogue with the Council of Traditional Doctors of Cauca, Colombia, the project explores the possibility of rebuilding connections with the living world through dreaming as a relationship between bodies, plants, territories and imaginaries. The stories emerging from these workshops will form a sound archive, reactivated in Dream Rooms, an installation for listening and meditation. In a world saturated with light, control and imposed narratives, nomasmetaforas advocates for the night as a space of opacity, slowing down and collective reinvention.

The Franco-Colombian collective was founded by Julián Dupont, born in Colombia in 1985, and Clara Melniczuk, born in France in 1991, who live and work between France and Colombia. At the intersection of contemporary art, collective pedagogies and more-than-human thought, their research-creation practice weaves together artistic practices and ecological rituals in dialogue with Indigenous communities in Cauca. Their projects have been presented internationally at MoMA PS1, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, MALBA, the Louvre Museum, Future Ours x Art2030, the Kunsthal Charlottenborg Biennale and CCA Glasgow.

Through her Animal Rites, the artist creates banquets in the landscape for commensal animals – species that live close to human environments, in the interstices of our inhabited areas. Filmed in infrared, the offerings are left to the night, revealing the activity of raccoons, foxes, opossums and other nocturnal visitors, who become true collaborators in the work. Through this practice, which celebrates an ecology of exchange, sharing and transformation, Dana Sherwood questions the dominance of the human gaze and reveals the night as a fragile, living common space, where the boundaries between hospitality, predation, proximity and cohabitation are continually renegotiated.

Born in the United States in 1977, she lives and works in New York State. For more than fifteen years, interdisciplinary artist Dana Sherwood has explored relationships between humans and nature through a feminist and ecological lens. Her work incorporates mythology and local flora to engage with the non-human world. Her career includes solo exhibitions at the Florence Griswold Museum, Geary Contemporary and Denny Gallery, as well as a presentation at Documenta 13, Storm King Art Center and the Palais des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Chang-Ching Su investigates a distinctive form of light pollution in the Matsu archipelago, Taiwan: the green lights of squid-fishing boats which, each night, transform the horizon into an artificial dawn. Developed with the Dark-Sky night conservation association, the project combines photography, video, light installation and research to document the impact of this light on nocturnal and migratory species, while also examining the political history of darkness in Matsu, long shaped by military curfews and requirements for domestic lights to be concealed. Through this investigation, the artist reveals a transborder system where ecology, labour, food, surveillance, maritime economics and geopolitical imaginaries intersect.

Born in Taiwan in 1995, he lives and works in Wisconsin. A research-based artist working with photography and video installation, Chang-Ching Su explores the power dynamics shaping sociopolitical systems, notably through his project Jigging Green on the Taiwan Strait. His work has been presented at EXPO Chicago, MIA Photo Fair, Skövde Art Museum and the Taiwan International Photo Festival. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The 2026 COAL Prize is supported financially by the French Biodiversity Agency (Office français de la biodiversité), the French Ministry of Culture, the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature, the Fondation François Sommer and the Fondation LAccolade, as well as through partnerships with Ateliers Médicis and Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles/Paris, Les Nuits des Forêts and Fondation Carmignac.