Elsa Werth winner of the 23rd Pernod Ricard Foundation Prize

Regulatory News:

Press release – Paris, 7 June 2023

Since 2000, the Centre Pompidou has hosted the Pernod Ricard (Paris:RI) Foundation Prize, which each year recognises a young artist from France’s emerging art scene. The works by the winners are donated to the Centre’s Musée National d’Art Moderne, thus enhancing its collections in a unique way. The winner also benefits from financial support to complete a personal project internationally.

The 23^rd edition of the Pernod Ricard Corporate Foundation Prize was won by the artist Elsa Werth (born in Paris in 1985, where she still lives and works), on the occasion of the collective exhibition “Horizones”, created by Clément Dirié, curator of the 2022 edition of this annual gathering of the French contemporary art scene. Elsa Werth has been presented with her award on 6 June 2023, marking the addition of her artworks to the collections of the Centre Pompidou.

Elsa Werth’s work takes multiple forms: installations, sculptures, videos, artists’ books and sound pieces. She spotlights ordinary actions and everyday habits associated with contemporary activities and rituals by highlighting them and destabilizing them through movement, subversion of purpose and disruption.

With genuine economy of resources, her creations are anti-spectacular. Her choice of materials are the fabric of everyday life – objects, words, shapes and symbols with which and through which we live our lives. Common items in every sense of the word – common because they are ordinary but also because they are shared. As part of the Pernod Ricard Corporate Foundation Prize, the Centre Pompidou has received the 2019 Color Strip video; Un jour dans le Monde (A Day in Le Monde) (23 February 2022), the 2022 sound installation Abracadabra! and the 2023 artwork Business.

Color Strip, 2019

In this video, representations of all the flags of the world are put together and placed end to end. The images scroll across the screen alternating stripes, colours and symbols, each one emerging as a potential pictorial composition. The moving flow is punctuated with pauses where two flags meet, with the encounter resulting in unexpected graphic landscapes. Being slightly out of sync, the familiar national symbols give shape to new horizons. Through this work, we are invited to reflect on the complex notion of territories. Alluding to the crises that are currently affecting almost every part of the world, this work calls on us to experience a new closeness and a geography that needs to be redefined.