Barbara Chase-Riboud, Esther Ferrer, Jacqueline de Jong, Laura Lamiel, Rose Lowder, Vera Molnár, Marie Orensanz, Judit Reigl, Maria Klonaris / Katerina Thomadaki et Nil Yalter
The FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (Regional Contemporary Art Fund) and AWARE: Archives of Women Artists, Research and Exhibitions have joined forces to present Trajectories I Follow, AWARE Honorary Prize Laureates. This retrospective exhibition celebrates the tenth anniversary of the AWARE association (2024) and of the AWARE Prize (2026).
Since their creation in 2016, the AWARE Prizes have played an essential role in promoting and recognizing women and non-binary artists on the French art scene. The AWARE Honorary Prize, intended for artists with more than 40 years of career achievement, has been awarded to eleven laureates: Esther Ferrer (2016), Judit Reigl (2017), Vera Molnár and Nil Yalter (jointly in 2018), Jacqueline de Jong (2019), Marie Orensanz (2020), Barbara Chase-Riboud (2021), Laura Lamiel (2022), Rose Lowder (2023), Katerina Thomadaki for her joint work with Maria Klonaris (2024). In 2025, the Honorary Prize was awarded to Tsuneko Taniuchi.
Evoking trajectories of individual and collective lives and careers, this exhibition pays tribute to the singular paths of the artists who received the AWARE Honorary Prize. For the most part originally from abroad, they have enriched the French art scene with perspectives shaped by the specificity of their experiences. Their art, often accompanied by a strong political commitment, challenges the canonical reading of postwar art and calls for the writing of a decentered and therefore inclusive art history. In retrospect, the AWARE Prizes acknowledge the intercultural nature of the French art scene and the plural trajectories that run through it.