Announcing selected artists for the 2018 Pernod Ricard Fellowship

Pernod Ricard and Villa Vassilieff are delighted to announce the selected 2018 Pernod Ricard Fellows: Beto Shwafaty, Nikolay Smirnov, Yto Barrada & Mohamed Larbi Rahhali and Newell Harry.


Villa Vassilieff & The Pernod Ricard Fellowship:
Since the opening, Pernod Ricard joined forces with Villa Vassilieff, willing to support a lively artistic space, both convivial and international. Together, Pernod Ricard and Villa Vassilieff created the Pernod Ricard Fellowship: a grant allowing international artists, curators, or researchers to be in residence at the Villa’s studio, selected on a research based project by a prestigious international artistic committee, composed of leading actors from the contemporary art world.

With the Pernod Ricard Fellowship, Villa Vassilieff and Pernod Ricard invent a new form of sustainable sponsorship, ambitioning to accompany artists in all aspects of their work, to better meet the needs of artistic creation today. 

Retracing artist Tarsila do Amaral and poet Oswald de Andrade's paths in Paris, Beto Shwafaty (b. 1977, Brazil) will create a hybrid and somehow surrealistic drift-methodology employing fiction and documentation to speculate on the subversions they generated.

Considering that some ideas of the left-wing Eurasianism intellectual movement from the early 20th century resonate with contemporary issues, Nikolay Smirnov  (b. 1982, Russia) will investigate the Parisian (Clamart) Eurasianist Fraction that existed between 1926 and 1929.

Yto Barrada (b. 1971, France) will develop her exploration of understanding textile structures and techniques to create unique color samplers on large textile, using exclusively natural and organic dyes and plants, while Mohamed Larbi Rahhali (b. 1956, Morocco) will work on the movement of planets and their possible correspondence to our inner, intimate life.

From recurring travels and connections across Oceania and the wider Asia-Pacific, Newell Harry (b. 1972, Australia) will investigate the archival material existing in Paris on painter Paul Gauguin and question problematic issues of value, authenticity and ownership.


The 2018 Pernod Ricard Fellows were selected by an international Artistic Committee composed of:
Katie Dyer (Curator, Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences, Sydney, Australia), Andrey Egorov (Head of Research Department & Curator, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia), Abdellah Karroum (Artistic Director, L’apparte­ment 22, Rabat, Morocco & Director, Mathaf - Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar), Victoria Noorthoorn (Director, Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Sumeshwar Sharma (Curator & co-Founder, the Clark House Initiative, Bombay, India), Benjamin Seroussi (Director, Casa do Povo, Sao Paulo, Brazil), Bernard Blistène (Director, MNAM CCI – Centre Pompidou, Paris, France), Colette Barbier (Director, Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard, Paris, France), Mélanie Bouteloup (Director, Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research & Villa Vassilieff, Paris, France) and Virginie Bobin (Head of Programs, Villa Vassilieff, Paris, France).

Former and ongoing Pernod Ricard Fellows (2016 & 2017): Andrea Ancira (curator and researcher, Mexico), Ernesto Oroza (artist, USA/Cuba), Zheng Bo (artist, China), Sojung Jun (artist, South Korea), Ndidi Dike (artist, Nigeria), Koki Tanaka (artist, Japan), Samit Das (artist and art historian, India) and Mercedes Azpilicueta (artist, Argentina).

Villa Vassilieff is managed by Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research.
Bétonsalon – Center for Art and Research and Villa Vassilieff are two Cultural establishments of the City of Paris.

Newsletter
Stay in touch by subscribing to our newsletter here.