The finalists of the 2016 COAL Award

Awarding of the 2016 COAL Prize on October 12, at the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, in partnership with the Museum of Hunting and Nature

Under the patronage of the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea and the honorary presidency of Minister Ségolène Royal, the 2016 COAL Prize will be awarded on October 12, during a ceremony organized in Paris at the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, with the support of the European Union and the Imagine2020 network, the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Museum of Hunting and Nature and the François Sommer Foundation.

The COAL Art and Environment Prize is, since 2010, the international meeting place for visual artists who take up ecological issues and contribute through their creation to the construction of a sustainable world. This year again, nearly 250 artists from 46 countries representing six continents competed in an international call for projects. The ten nominated artists were selected for the aesthetic qualities of their proposals, their relevance to environmental issues, their inventiveness, their ability to transmit and transform, as well as their social and participatory approach. Together, they demonstrate how creation, in its diversity of forms and actions, is an essential force for building the future of our societies.

The finalists of the 7th edition of the COAL Prize

Florian Bérenguer (France) – History of Archipelago
Alex Cecchetti (France) – Belladonna, The Garden of Stories
Futurefarmers (USA) – Seed Journey
Louise Hervé and Chloé Maillet (France) – Kiki e manu
Jenny Lee (Sweden) – Living Factory
Emeric Lhuisset (France) – Last Water War, ruins of a future
Marginal – Zeno Franchini and Francesca Gattello (Italy) – Decolonizing Rural Landscape
Angelika Markul (France) – Tierra del Fuego
Heidi Quante and Alicia Escott (USA) – The Bureau of Linguistical Reality with farmers
Marie Velardi (France) – Land and Sea

The global ecological crisis, which includes climate change, biodiversity erosion, resource scarcity and various forms of pollution, is above all a cultural challenge, since it is determined by our individual and collective behavior. This is why the COAL Prize supports artists around the world who use their talent to bear witness, to imagine and experiment with solutions. The COAL Prize testifies to the creativity and diversity of practices of this committed global artistic movement. From testimony to the search for practical and alternative solutions, through citizen mobilization, the experimentation of new technologies or the visualization of invisible phenomena, they recompose the conceptual and formal tools that generate change. The forms and the fields of intervention are multiple and are deployed in the form of plastic works, all media, surveys, stories, experiments, social sculptures, and seize subjects as vast as climate change and the melting of ice, the transformation of landscapes, biotechnologies, the extraction of resources, the protection of biodiversity, inter-species relations, land use, or the future of agriculture and food.

Awarding of the 2016 COAL Prize on October 12, at the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, in partnership with the Museum of Hunting and Nature
-> RSVP required: contact(at)projetcoal.fr

Under the patronage of the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea and the honorary presidency of Minister Ségolène Royal, the 2016 COAL Prize will be awarded on October 12, during a ceremony organized in Paris at the Ministry of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, with the support of the European Union and the Imagine2020 network, the Ministry of Culture and Communication, the Museum of Hunting and Nature and the François Sommer Foundation.

DOTATION

The winner of the 2016 COAL Prize receives a 5,000 euro grant and a residence at the Domaine de Belval, property of the François Sommer Foundation, with additional financial support for the production.

The François Sommer Foundation is partnering with COAL to provide the 2016 COAL Prize with a unique artistic creation residency at the Domaine de Belval, along with financial support for the production.

The François Sommer Foundation, recognized as a public utility since its creation on November 30, 1966, was created by François and Jacqueline Sommer, pioneers in the implementation of a humanist ecology. Faithful to the commitments of its founders, it works for the protection of a biodiversity where man finds his rightful place, for the respectful use of nature’s resources and the sharing of the wealth of natural, artistic and cultural heritage.

The domain of Belval is located in the commune of Belval-Bois-des-Dames. With a surface area of 600 hectares, it is essentially forested and covered with meadows and 40 hectares of ponds. A true observatory of rurality and wildlife, it welcomes each year artists selected for their contribution to the renewal of the vision of the relationship between man and his natural environment. The Foundation’s commitment to supporting contemporary artistic creation is demonstrated by the fact that the residence at the Domaine de Belval contributes to the dissemination of the artists’ works to a wide audience. It also puts at the service of the creation a network of complementary skills carried by the scientific and educational teams of the Museum of Hunting and Nature and those of the Belval estate.

Download the charter of the residence at the Domaine de Belval

JURY

Placed under the honorary presidency of Mrs. Ségolène Royal, Minister of the Environment, Energy and the Sea, in charge of international relations on the Climate, the jury is composed of personalities of art, ecology and research:

Claude d’Anthenaise, chief curator of the Museum of Hunting and Nature
Stéphane Foucart, journalist
Paul-Marie Grangeon, collector
Béatrice Josse, director of the national center of contemporary art Le Magasin in Grenoble
Laurence Monnoyer-Smith, Commissioner General for Sustainable Development
Olivier Lerude, sustainable development mission of the Ministry of Culture and Communication
Jérôme Sans, curator, co-artistic director of the Grand Paris Express

PROJECT SELECTION

The selection criteria of the projects take into account the artistic value, the relevance (understanding of the stakes), the originality (capacity to propose new approaches, themes or angles of view), the pedagogy (capacity to pass on a message, to raise awareness), the social and participative approach (commitment, testimony, efficiency, societal dynamics), the eco-design and the feasibility

The selection committee for the 2016 COAL Award welcomed this year Raphaël Abrille, General Secretary of the Museum of Hunting and Nature.

The COAL Prize supports artistic projects in progress or to come. Its endowment is not intended to cover the totality of the production costs of the project and must be considered as an aid to its development.

IMAGE CREDIT

Seung-taek Lee, Earth Play, 1979-89, Balloon painted with oil, 500cm (diameter). Courtesy of Gallery HYUNDAI and the artist