2021 selection committee
All members are announced!
We are really pleased to announce that Matthieu Lelièvre, SMITH, Mireille Provansal and Estelle Sohier have joined the selection committee for the 2021-22 edition of the Taurus Prize for Visual Arts. All four have spent time researching and reflecting on the Rhone. Estelle and Mireille are based at one and the other end of the river, and Matthieu has been based in Lyon since 2018, where he collaborates with the Musée d’Art Contemporain.
Matthieu Lelièvre
Matthieu Lelièvre is an art historian and a freelance curator. He graduated from the Ecole du Louvre and the Institut National du Patrimoine in Paris, and subsequently curated and programmed in various public and private institutions. In Paris, he worked at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs; Thaddaeus Ropac gallery; Palais de Tokyo, as well as at the Beaux-Arts Museum in Orleans, France, and in various Berlin galleries. Since 2018, he collaborates with the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, as Artistic Director and Curator, while maintaining his independent practice. He is working towards various exhibitions, performance programs and workshops in Lyon, France, Brésil, Spain and Tunisia, at present.
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Estelle Sohier
After completing her PhD at the Paris I University, France, and the Oriental University in Naples, Italy, Estelle Sohier worked in France, Italy and Ethiopia before joining the department of geography and environmental studies of the Geneva University in Switzerland, where she currently acts as Associate Professor. Her research spans the History of Photography, and focuses on the notions of geographical imaginaries. She recently published Une Odyssée Photographique. Fred Boissonnas et la Méditerranée at the Editions de la Martinière (2020.)
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Mireille Provansal
As a geoomorphologist, Mireille Provansal made her career at the Université Aix-Marseille 1, as part of the European Center for Research on Geosciences and Environmental Studies. She wrote various essays on deltaic milieux, and specializes on the Rhone river delta. For several years, she was an active member of the scientific board of the Rhone-Mediterranean committee, an entity that brings together public and private representatives working around the question of water: public collectivities, the French state, water users, various experts and scientists, and the elected official in charge of the coordination of the Rhone-Mediterranean region.
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SMITH
SMITH’s practice can be defined as the observation of human identity’s mutations. Photography are combined with cinema, video, choreography, performance, bio-art, sculpture, and new media, in an exploration of scientific and philosophic crossings. His works have been presented at the Rencontres d’Arles; Palais de Tokyo; Pompidou Center; Thêatre de la Cité Internationale, in Paris, France; at the Museum of Photography in Helsinki, Finland, as well as in many film festivals and cinemas in Europe.
In 2021, SMITH published two catalogues, Désidération (prologue) with Textuel and Desiderea Nuncia with Palais books, which were released to accompany his exhibition at the Rencontres.
SMITH graduated from the Sorbonne University; ENSP Arles (National School of Photography); Fresnoy, and is a PhD candidate at UQAM, Canada.