Le Prix Marcel Duchamp, Une séparation at Passerelle Centre d’art contemporain

For over twenty years the Prix Marcel Duchamp has each year crowned the career of an artist of the French scene, and in partnership with the ADIAF – Association pour la diffusion internationale de l’art français (Association for the International diffusion of French Art), this summer Passerelle is hosting an exhibition bringing together six artists who were award-winners or nominees between 2006 and 2019. The exhibition offers a partial panorama of art in France today through one apparently simple word: separation.

Taking up the title of the film by Asghar Farhadi, the exhibition examines separation in its many meanings and definitions. In 2011, Asghar Farhadi focussed on this word through various major issues, especially the cultural and religious differences in Iran, tension between the generations and social classes, as well as the difficulties experienced by women in a patriarchal society. The exhibition aims to widen these themes and extend the possible meanings of separation. This word can equally well refer to a romantic break-up as to the distance between two things, or to division – the difference between concepts, people or geographies.

The contemplative film MiddleSea by Zineb Sedira portrays the ferry journey between Algiers and Marseille. A man is watching the sea, leaving the viewer wondering: what is his story? Is he going somewhere or coming home? The Mediterranean separates the continents of Africa and Europe as much as it links them. The crossing becomes a time of expectant waiting and of poetry, the metaphor of a border that is both vague and infinite.

The story told by Thu-Van Tran is also situated in a particular geopolitical and social register but in a completely different region of the world. With Arirang Partition, the artist uses traditional Korean music to recollect the unity of the peninsula. She also reproduces scenes and motifs drawn from the homespun vocabulary of Korea and its history.

Yto Barrada examines cultural separations and possible rapprochements in her film installation Tree Identification for Beginners, with Pan-Africanism, Black Power in America and the civil disobedience movements inherent in the Vietnam War. She subtly interchanges the tales of the protagonists with stop-motion images of toys by Montessori, an alternative learning method. Her animated abstract forms recall the mobile works of Bruno Peinado which split the space into multiple dimensions.

Peinado’s separations are also a way of rethinking the status of the work in traditional art: is hanging on a wall the only place for a painting to be found? Or can it be given a fresh breath of life? The formal interplay in the exhibition creates uncertainty and reconfigures the art centre.

Although the separation may be physical, it is above all a matter of feelings for Anne-Marie Schneider. Her paintings bring us back to romantic matters, stories of break-ups and pain, or to the moment one enters adult life.

Éric Baudelaire is interested in the boundary between the paranormal and our real world, recreating a para-scientific experience. What is the place of chance in our lives? What limits do we impose on reason and on the power of the mind? These are some of the questions posed by the artist in this new installation produced for this exhibition.