The 5 winners of the 2022 Committed Citizen Artist Award

In a context marked by crises, the climate emergency and the testing of our democracies, art is a formidable engine of citizenship and emotions that can amaze us individually and collectively, bring us together in joy, but also mobilize us and encourage us to act. Discover the 5 artists awarded the Committed Citizen Artist Award and their actions as original as they are exemplary!

Rewarding and encouraging artists’ civic engagement

Created in 2020, the Committed Citizen Artist Award rewards artists who are committed in France and Spain, as citizens, to transform established models, with remarkable actions in the face of societal challenges. Through their careers and their demanding artistic practices, the 5 artists awarded this year have joined forces with collective adventures that are as original as they are exemplary around civic and solidarity issues. By working with residents, children and young people, vulnerable people, associations, scientists, public authorities… They bring out new forms of action that open up other paths to a desirable future.

At a time when the current crises reveal the shortcomings and deadlocks of our world, and our societies are looking for a new lease of life, we wish with this Prize to highlight the involvement of artists as full-fledged actors in the transformation towards a more ecological, inclusive and fulfilling society.

Basurama / ReLabs (Laboratorio de Residuos Vivos)

Art, architecture and the environment are the three pillars of Basurama, a collective that studies and acts on the city and its complex dynamics. The “ReLabs (Laboratorio de Residuos Vivos)” project is revamping the Madrid City Council’s waste management system to make it more efficient and more adapted to the current situation. Networking, active participation, use of local resources and creativity are the key to their social transformation projects. Their unmistakable civic commitment is part of a methodology involving the inhabitant, the neighbourhood and the collective concerned.

Eric Minh Cuong Castaing / In situ In socius

Choreographer and visual artist, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing combines dance, images, sounds, and new technologies to explore the experience of fragility, loss of mobility, and the importance of gestures to connect and communicate with others. Her transdisciplinary practice has given rise to the production of choreographic pieces, films, installations and performances, associating professional and amateur dancers, of all ages, with disabilities or fragility. What gestures should we keep if movement becomes an issue, an objective, a struggle that demands our full attention? The “In situ In socius” approach that he has built over time, proposes a new way of dancing together and underlines the need for the human gesture in a society that wants to be more inclusive.

Valérie Mréjen & Mohamed El Khatib / LBO, an art centre in a nursing home (or vice versa)

Valérie Mréjen, novelist, videographer and visual artist, and Mohamed El Khatib, author and director, have joined forces to create LBO, a real Art Centre within a public accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people (EHPAD), “Les blés d’or” in Savoie. A shared creative model, this new place, inaugurated in June 2022, brings together residents, artists, healthcare staff and cultural institutions. At the junction between art, care and old age, this project reinvents the limits and definition of an artistic space. With complementary approaches, this young duo of artists with long careers, succeeds with high standards and poetry in renewing our view of establishments for dependent people and our way of making society.

Francisco José Suárez, “el Torombo” Fuera de série

With flamenco as his standard, el Torombo enjoys a special prestige as a “palmero”, responsible for accompanying the bailaor, cantaor or tocaor by clapping his palms. His journey and experiences overcoming heavy hardships, such as physical disability or heroin addiction, have led him to work with disadvantaged young people to show them that everyone can overcome their own situation and that art plays a decisive role in change. In Seville, in the Polígono Sur neighbourhood, considered one of the most dangerous, his Fuera de série project promotes the social transformation of the neighbourhood among young people but also volunteers, families, teachers and the community in general.

Barthélémy Toguo/ Desire for humanity at Bandjoun Station

A Franco-Cameroonian multidisciplinary artist, Barthélémy Toguo quickly acquired international renown. Through his way of orchestrating gesture, drawing and colour, his work communicates a formidable vital energy, an infinite poetry and imagination. His life experience, African history, and the news of his time are among the inexhaustible sources of his work and his struggles. With his very wide range of techniques, he offers us a humanist work, both lyrical and civic. In parallel to his career as an artist, Barthélémy Toguo has been working since the early 2000s on the creation and development of Bandjoun Station, a place of residence and exchange on the western highlands of Cameroon. This new model of artistic action open to the world, integrating a social, agricultural and environmental dimension, is fully in line with the concerns of our contemporary societies.

Game-changing artists, to be found in podcasts

The winners can be found in podcasts as part of the series “Voices of Citizen Art” available on all listening platforms (Spotify, Deeezer, Addict podcast, etc.) but also on our website. During interviews, they opened their doors to us to share their vision, experience and convictions. These sensitive exchanges are already online for the artists awarded in the previous edition: Neïl Beloufa, Patrick Bouchain, Santiago Cirugeda, Julio Jara and Cristina Pato.

“The Voices of Citizen Art” also give a voice to the actors we support in the context of our various programs, around education, mediation and cultural democracy, or collaboration with science. In their diversity, they express our values: Joy, Confidence, Demand, Curiosity and Atypism, cultivating and celebrating the unexpected and happy crossroads of paths, artistic fields and forms of action.

Thank you to the members of the jury!

The winning artists were identified and selected by a Franco-Spanish monitoring committee, then awarded by a jury of volunteer experts based on an in-depth study of their background, their artistic practice and their commitment to a project.

Stéphanie AUBIN, Choreographer, Director of the Maison des Métallos

Costa BADÍA MELIS, Artist and cultural manager specialized in functional diversity

Patrick BOUCHAIN, Architect-urban planner, Winner of the 2020 Committed Citizen Artist Award

Jesús CARRILLO, Professor of History and Theory of Art at the UAM, Member of the Steering Committee of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation

Juan CASERO, Co-director of the Onfire Flamenco Festival and music producer

Elvira DYANGANI, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA)

Denis LABORDE, Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of Studies at the EHESS

Graziella NIANG, Director of Jazz à Tours

Pierre OUDART, Dean of the Marseille-Méditerranée School of Art and Design

Cristina PATO, Musician, Winner of the 2020 Committed Citizen Artist Award

Guillermo SOLANA, Artistic Director of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum

Barbara WOLFFER, Administrator of the Panthéon – Centre des Monuments Nationaux

Photo credits On the front page: Cha Gonzales / Compagnie Shonen – Portrait Klaus Fruchtis: Alok Rajoo – Portrait Pepa Octavio de Toledo: Pablo Mendivil – 2022 winning portraits in order of appearance: courtesy of Basurama / Fabien Breuil / Yohanne Lamoulère – Tendance floue / El Torombo / Miquel Coll