Drawing Prize 2024 nominations: Lamia Joreige, Amir Nave, Christos Venetis

On December 11, 2023 in Paris, Daniel and Florence Guerlain have announced the names of the three nominated artists for the 17th Drawing Prize.

Lamia Joreige, Lebanese artist born in 1972. She graduated from the École supérieure d’arts graphiques, Paris, and the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA. Since the late 1990s, she has exhibited in numerous international galleries and museums and taken part in multiple bienniales, namely those in Istanbul (2022), Liverpool (2018), Sharjah (2017) and Venice (2006). Her works are now in the collections of the Mnam-Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Tate Modern (London), the Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), the Saradar Collection (Beirut), the Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha), the Frac Bretagne (Rennes) and Florence and Daniel Guerlain.

Using different media—not only drawing but also photography, video, objects and installations—Lamia Joreige explores the relationships that we foster with history and the impact that they have on us. Based on real and historical facts, how does one create forms and narratives? That is the main question Joreige asks herself, after having gathered together an immense amount of research and written documents, most frequently on Lebanon and its region. Over the past few years, the artist has taken a keen interest in the constitution of her country around the time of the First World War. “The troubles occurring in Syria that may have consequences on all the surrounding territories have reminded me of that other moment in history when nations were redesigned and fragmented,” she starts to explain. She thus delves into the memoirs of King Faysal, who could have headed the first independent Arab monarchy, had his project not failed; or immerses herself in the throes of the massive famine of 1915, caused by an invasion of locusts, diverse speculation and maritime blocades. She then attempts to comprehend the mental and physical impact of these devastating events on the population.*

Amir Nave, Israeli artist born in 1974. A selftaught artist, his works have been exhibited at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ramat Gan Museum of Israeli Art, the Mishkan Museum of Art (Ein Harod), the Baekong Museum (Ulsan, South Korea), the Gallery of the Memorial Center (Kiryat Tiv’on), the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Sommer ContemporaryArt (Tel Aviv). His works are now in the collections of the Israel Museum (Jerusalem), the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, the Ashdod Museum of Art, the Mishkan Museum of Art, the Artis Foundation (Israel/New York), the Tank Shanghai (China) and Florence and Daniel Guerlain. He is represented by the Galerie In Situ—Fabienne Leclerc (Paris), the Chelouch Contemporary Art Gallery (Israel) and the Shin Gallery (New York).

Considered in an infinite temporality, the human being is worked by Amir Nave in an obsessive, spiritual, or even quasi-mystical manner. He endlessly asks himself who we are and where we are going. By following the movement of Nave’s figures or “creatures”, the spectator embraces some of human passions. If certain works even seem to play on classics of art history and mythology, Nave nonetheless refutes the notion of representing an everyday life meant to help us better understand who we are. In his early career, he took an interest in landscapes and insects, searching for parallels between our species and theirs. His forms then evolved into “creatures”, drawing on deeply buried pasts as well as possible futures. Sometimes depicted as a body, a head or an entity, they are alive and active. “The human being is unfathomable and, within each of us, this question of eternity resides,” he says. “In my work, I try to grasp what these characters are doing and where they are heading.” Faced with these philosophical and metaphysical questions, the artist reminds us that the fact of living in Israel, and more generally in the Middle East, has long induced a sort of tension.*

Christos Venetis, Greek artist born in 1967. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts (specialising in visual and applied arts) at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has exhibited at the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), the IRIS Cultural Center (Stavroupoli), the Jewish Museum(Thessaloniki), the Cultural Center (Limassol) and the Biennial of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, organised by ARCI Kids (Italy). His works are now in the collections of Florence and Daniel Guerlain and Rudolf Zwirner. He is represented by the Galerie Martin Kudlek (Cologne and Brussels).

With his torn book covers, Christos Venetis conveys a vision of the world combining poetic projection, reflections on the role of the image and gleanings from the deluge of photos found on the Internet.

As if observing a sort of protocol, Venetis does most of his drawings in graphite pencil on phantom book covers. There is a vivid contrast between his delicate, meticulously executed, small-scale formats and the badly treated spine of the book whose title remains unknown. If the supports recall the darkest moments in history, namely the book burnings during the Second World War, the overall questions of representation and narrative of the image prevail. The artist claims that he even explores a sort of absence of choice, in the face of which he restores “materiality to the image”. While offering the deepest shades of black and certain details—notably the nape of a neck, an arm languidly outstretched on a bed or bare legs—which immerse the spectator in an atmosphere of soft eroticism, Venetis is a artist who likes to cite his references. They range from “The Arabian Nights” to the historian and professor of comparative literature Sven Spieker or to the art critic Benjamin Buchloh, analysing the notion of archives.*

*extracts from texts by Marie Maertens.

An exhibition of works by the three shortlisted artists will be presented at the Salon du Dessin from March 20 to 25, 2024 (Palais Brongniart, Place de la Bourse, Paris). The jury will meet on March 21 at the Salon du Dessin and the winner will be announced the same day at noon.

The members of the 2024 jury are: Harry Tappan Heher, American; Burkhard Heyl , German; Damiana Leoni Italian; Claudina Trapani Paauw, Dutch; Gérard Boulois, Patricia Dupin, Philippe Lhotte, Florence & Daniel Guerlain French.

About the prize
Awarded for the first time in 2007 and biennial until 2009, the Prize honours artists who make any unique work on paper, using graphic means: crayon, charcoal, red chalk, ink, wash tint, gouache, watercolour, pastels and felt, including collages and wall drawings but excluding computer and mechanical processes. The Prize concerns artists for whom drawing on paper or cardboard is a significant part of their work.

The three artists nominated each year by a committee of six experts may be of French or foreign nationality on condition that they entertain a privileged cultural link with France through institutional exhibitions, studies or being in residence there.

Following a working meeting with the artists, visits to studios and analysis, the committee selects three artists whose work is presented to a jury that changes with each prize and chooses the winner.

The Prize’s endowment is 25,000 EUR: 15,000 EUR for the laureate and 5,000 EUR for each of the two other artists. A work by the winner is offered,  by the Foundation to the National nuseum of modern art, Prints and Drawings Department.

The prize receives the support of “Le Cercle des Amis”, la Maison Guerlain, la banque Neuflize OBC, Artcurial, Artprice by ArtMarket.com, Voisin Consulting Life Sciences, le Groupe Élysées Monceau, le Groupe Pasteur Mutualité, PatrimOne assurances, Arte Generali, Le Salon du Dessin, La Maison Ruinart.

Past laureates: Silvia Bächli, Switzerland (2007), Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, Chile (2009), Catharina Van Eetvelde, Belgium (2010), Marcel Van Eeden, Netherlands (2011), Jorinde Voigt, Germany (2012), Susan Hefuna, Germany (2013), Tomasz Kowalski, Poland (2014), Jockum Nordström, Sweden (2015), Cameron Jamie, United States (2016), Ciprian Muresan, Romania (2017), Mamma Andersson, Sweden (2018), Claire Morgan, Irland (2019), Juan Uslé, Spain (2020), Françoise Pétrovitch, Fance (2021), Olga Chernysheva, Russia (2022), Pascal Leyder, Belgium (2023).