Kelly Tissot is the seventh winner of this year's Paul Ege Art Prize.

Kelly Tissot will present her work in a solo show, which will be shown at the PEAC Museum on the occasion of its 20th anniversary this year as part of the anniversary exhibition Between White Walls... .

The Paul Ege Art Prize, endowed with 10,000 euros, has been awarded every three years since 2007 by the Ege Art and Culture Foundation in cooperation with the City of Freiburg. The prize commemorates the Freiburg entrepreneur and patron of the arts Paul Ege, who died in 2019. The prize is aimed at young artists up to 35 years of age who come from or work in the three-country border region (DE, CH, FR). Previous winners are Kathrin Herzner, Vera Mayer, Christoph Poetsch, Maria Tackmann, Judith Kakon and Laura Sacher.

Kelly Tissot was born in France in 1995, completed her Bachelor’s degree 2018 at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art in Lausanne and in 2020 her Master’s degree at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel, where she currently lives and works.

The award of the prize is judged in a two-stage process consisting of a nomination committee and a jury. This year, the members of the nomination committee were Iris Hasler, associate curator, Fondation Beyeler (CH), Samuel Leuenberger, director, SALTS (CH), and Elfi Turpin, director, CRAC Alsace (FR). The jury consisted of Aoife Rosenmeyer, art critic (CH), Marijke van Warmerdam, artist and professor, State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe (DE), and Sandrine Wymann, director, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (FR).

Jury statement

„Kelly Tissot employs photography in order to communicate a close but unsentimental viewpoint of agricultural and rural life. In this work she presents a little-explored perspective with considerable authority. It is not romantic nor is it driven primarily by environmental concerns but manifests the social structures of farm and rural life.

The jury was impressed by Tissot’s mastery of photography, informed by the artist’s research into various techniques and supports. Her analogue photography is the basis for carefully constructed prints complemented by architectural elements that are both independent sculptures and an exhibition architecture that cleverly corrals viewers.

In this practice, the photographic works become sculptural and sculptural elements are graphic. The scenography is often slight yet nonetheless contributes to an orchestration of the viewer’s movement and the viewing experience. In the structures themselves, Tissot identifies an overlooked and uncelebrated vernacular and creates forms that, with minimal means, speak of the practice of farming, of influences from other sectors, of scale and of populations.”
Aoife Rosenmeyer, Marijke van Warmerdam, Sandrine Wymann

After the first act of the anniversary exhibition Between White Walls... focused on the PEAC Museum's collection through the PEAC Spotlight format, the additional solo presentation by Kelly Tissot from June 7 to July 21, 2024 now forms the second act of the exhibition.