In “Art contemporain: l’artiste Guadeloupéenne Minia Biabiany remporte un prix de 100 000 $,” Guadeloupe La 1ère announced that Guadeloupean-born Minia Biabiany (photo below) won the first $100,000 grant from the Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with several international museums, for a new moving image commission focused on the environmental crisis.
Minia Biabiany is a visual artist born in Basse-Terre in 1988. After studying at the Ecole nationale des Beaux-arts de Lyon, she graduated in 2011. Since then, she has exhibited in Europe, the United States, Central America, and in the Caribbean. She notably participated in the Berlin Biennial in 2018. In 2019, she won the Prix Sciences Po pour l’art contemporain [Sciences Po (Political Science) Prize for Contemporary Art].
Between Mexico and Guadeloupe
Biabiany lives and works between Mexico City, in Mexico, and Saint-Claude, in Guadeloupe. She creates her works from found and organic materials, and her work aims to deconstruct social or cultural histories/stories. She is particularly interested in the representation of cultural heritage and postcolonialism.
This first edition of the prize, supported by the Han Nefkens Foundation with the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo de Mexico, and The Bass (Museum) of Miami Beach, focused on the theme of ecology. It supports the creation of a work of art exploring humanity’s unsustainable relationship with the Earth, which will then be exhibited at participating institutions.
Mixing art and ecology
Minia Biabiany, who has exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo and at the 10th Berlin Biennale, plans to mix art, ecology, and pedagogy in the context of her native Guadeloupe, using her project to highlight the political power of “imagery poetic.” The jury congratulated her for responding to contemporary emergencies through a practice combining colonial histories, ecological crises, and cultural stories.
The artist says, “This grant allows me to further explore how art can engage with ecology and pedagogy to provoke thought and inspire change. I am grateful for the trust of the jury and the opportunity to contribute to this critical dialogue.”
[Sculpture entitled “Histoire de cadence avec eau et volcan.” Minia Biabiany’s photo, courtesy of the Han Nefkens Foundation.]
Article translated by Ivette Romero. For full article (in French), see https://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/guadeloupe/basse-terre/art-contemporain-l-artiste-guadeloupeenne-minia-biabiany-remporte-un-prix-de-100-000-1480031.html
For more on the Han Nefkens Foundation, see https://www.hnfoundation.com/
In “Art contemporain: l’artiste Guadeloupéenne Minia Biabiany remporte un prix de 100 000 $,” Guadeloupe La 1ère announced that Guadeloupean-born Minia Biabiany (photo below) won the first $100,000 grant from the Han Nefkens Foundation, in collaboration with several international museums, for a new moving image commission focused on the environmental crisis. Minia Biabiany is a
