Reims. Esther Ferrer, Judit Reigl, Vera Molnár, Nil Yalter, Barbara Chase-Riboud… It is a 5-star cast who invites himself on the picture rails of the Champagne-Ardenne Frac. Exhibition event, “trajectories that I am. Winners of the Aware Honorary Prize “celebrates a double birthday: that of the Aware Association, which celebrated in 2024 ten years of engagement in favor of the rehabilitation of women artists in art history, and that of the AWare Honorary Prize, awarded each year, since 2016, to an active woman artist on the French scene for more than forty years. Placed under the police station of Matylda Taszycka, Éléonore Besse and Ambre Panhard, the exhibition is a double success for Aware: it testifies not only to the insight of the juries of its honorary prize, the ten winners being pillars of the history of contemporary art, but also of the capacity of its members to sign quality exhibitions.
The three commissioners skillfully underline the concerns common to the ten artists, while emphasizing their contribution to the artistic movements of the 20th and 21st centuries. Taking the form of a reflection on the perception of the female body, the feminist commitment of the artists is in a way the common thread of the exhibition. “Trajectories that I am” thus presents two emblematic works of bodily art of the 1970s: performance photographs Intimate and staff (1977) by Esther Ferrer and The headless woman (1974), Nile Yalter’s first video performance in which the latter written in the black felt on his belly a text by poet Victor Nelli. In this pantheon of body art There are also Marina Abramović, Orlan, Valie Export or Carolee Schneemann.
Body art but also digital art
Vera Molnár, Letter1988 – 1990, series “Letters from my mother”, Collection National Center for Plastic Arts.
© ADAGP, Paris, 2025 / CNAP
Body art is also embodied by the experimental film Double labyrinth (1976, 41 min) of the duo Maria Klonaris and Katerina Thomadaki, one filming the other, a look articulating the notions of identity and interiority. Beyond this coherent corpus, the exhibition highlights the diversity of practices rewarded by the Honorary Prize: the digital art of Vera Molnár, pioneer of Computer Art ; The creation and edition of the review The situationist Times by Jacqueline de Jong; The tension between figuration and abstraction at Judit Reigl.
The exhibition also pays tribute to the acquisition policies of French public collections since their creation in the 1980s. From the National Center for Plastic Arts first, lender of Ferrer, Molnár, Marie Orensanz and Laura Lamiel. Regional funds of contemporary art (FRAC) then: FRAC Alsace and the Pays de la Loire, but especially the Frac Lorraine, of which some of the most remarkable pieces of the exhibition come from-and, more generally, from the history of contemporary art. The photographic prints ofIntimate and staff (Ferrer), sculpture Walk (almost) random (1998-1999) of Molnár and the posters of one of the many actions of the project “It is a hard profession that exile” (1976-2012) of Nil Yalter come from the collection of the 49 North 6 East.
