French-Haitian artist Gaëlle Choisne wins the Prix Marcel Duchamp

Choisne’s work, infused with mysticism, explores the connections between the personal and the universal and often addresses sociopolitical issues. Judges praised her winning installation as combining “gravity and lightness”.

France’s most prestigious contemporary art award, the Prix Marcel Duchamp, this year went to French-Haitian artist Gaëlle Choisne.
The 39-year-old artist will receive a €35,000 grant and a two-year residency at the Sèvres – Manufacture and Musée Nationaux, one of Europe’s most prominent porcelain producers and ceramics museums.
Along with works by nominees Abdelkader Benchamma, and Noémie Goudal and a duo Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, Choisne’s installation ‘L’Ère du Verseau’ (The Age of Aquarius) (2024) – combining video projections, hive-like structures made of cork, and large painted panels – is on show at the Pompidou Centre  in Paris.
“I’m thrilled to have a large space within the exhibition, because that creates something fairly immersive, which goes well with my art,” the artist told the Pompidou Centre, which announced Choisne as winner on Monday (October 14).
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Speaking to the Centre Pompidou Magazine, Choisne dubbed the work “an island, an archipelago, a place where different realities accumulate to be reinvented and repaired”.
“On the floor: dyed, black concretions made of cork, like a volcanic beach; on the walls: large painted panels adorned with a collection of various found items; in the centre: hive-like structures, also made of cork, from which video sequences are projected,” editor-in-chief Séverine Pierron described the installation, calling it a “temporal and sensorial journey in a recomposed space.”
Jury member and Director of the Musée national d’art moderne – where the next editions of the Prix Marcel Duchamp will be presented while the Pompidou Centre undergoes renovations – Xavier Rey was equally impressed. 
“Given the fragility and experimental nature of her work, Gaëlle Choisne succeeds in mixing gravity and lightness through multiple, multidisciplinary experiments that invite us to enter into her system,” he said.
The Prix Marcel Duchamp 2024 exhibition is on show at the Pompidou Centre in Paris until 6 January 2025.