Mimosa Echard

Born in 1986 in Alès, France,[1][2] She grew up with her sisters in a hippy community in the Cévennes.[3] She studied at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs in Paris, from which she graduated in 2010.[1]

In 2019, she was a resident at Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto.[4] Since 2021, she has been the head of the painting workshop at the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Echard is the winner of the 2022 edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize.[1]

She is represented by the galleries Chantal Crousel (Paris) and Martina Simeti (Milan).[1]

Echard's artistic research explores the boundaries between nature and pop culture. Thanks to a multidisciplinary practice that ranges from painting, to sculpture, to video and digital,[5] she creates fictional worlds with psychedelic traits through the accumulation and assemblage of objects, images as well as botanical references from the Cévennes (her native region), a region with a long history of counter-cultural and community experiments initiated in the 1970s.[6]

Collaboration is important in reading her work: ”Collaborations are always a way of creating collective events and experiences outside of the validation system of art and institutions”.[7] One example is the "open-source experimental exploration game" proposed by Echard as part of her exhibition at Palais de Tokyo in 2022, accessible only online. Designed in collaboration with a software developer, musicians and actors, the “scenario imagines an engaging and humorous approach to interspecies relations”.[8]

Her work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions, including Sporal, at Palais de Tokyo in 2022, or Sluggy Me at the Collection Lambert, in Avignon in 2021,[1] but also in various galleries including the Samy Abraham gallery in Paris[9]

• 2010: Pour changer de forme, diploma, École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, Paris
• 2012: Booster, Modules Pierre-Bergé - Yves-Saint-Laurent Foundation, curated by Daria de Beauvais, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
• 2012: Oiseau / hasard, Bernard-Anthonioz Art House, Nogent-sur-Marne
• 2014: Destroy the Image and You Will Break the Enemy, Project room, Chez Valentin Gallery, Paris
• 2015: Asterico Mariposa, Fire Place, Barcelona
• 2015: Dead is the New Life, Le Plateau (center of contemporary art) / Frac, Île-de-France
• 2015: Mithril, with Jonathan Martin, Circonstance Gallery, Nice
• 2015: Une robe profonde d'empathie, with Jean-Marie Perdrix, Samy Abraham Gallery, Paris
• 2016: iDeath, Samy Abraham Gallery, Paris
• 2017: Friends, Samy Abraham Gallery, Paris
• 2017: Pulsion Potion, Cell Project Space Gallery, London
• 2018: Mauve Dose, Maternity Ward of the Geneva HUG, Geneva
• 2019: Pulpe, with Shanta Rao, curated by Raphaël Brunet, Ecole municipale des beaux-arts, Édouard-Manet Gallery, Gennevilliers
• 2019: Luca, with Michel Blazy, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund
• 2019: Cracher une image de toi/ Spitting an image of you, with Ryan Foerster and Hannah Buonaguro, VNH Gallery, Paris
• 2020 Un bout de toi, Salomon, Martina Simeti, Milan, Italy[10]
• 2021 Numbs, Chantal Crousel Gallery, Paris, France[11]
• 2021 Sluggy Me, Lambert Collection, Avignon, France[12]
• 2022 Sporal, Palais de Tokyo, Paris, France[13]

• 2015 Finalist, Le Meurice Prize for Contemporary Art, Paris, France[14]
• 2018 Finalist, BFSP Sculpture Prize, Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan, Italy[15]
• 2021 Acquisition of the Marval Collection Fund, Italy[16]
• 2021 Ettore and Ines Fico Prize, Turin, Italy[17]
• 2022: Marcel Duchamp Prize, Centre Georges-Pompidou, Paris[1]

• 2011: Thailywood artist residency, Chonburi (Thailand)
• 2014 Lafayette Anticipations, Corporate Foundation of the Lafayette Galleries, Paris, France[18]
• 2014: Villa Arson, Nice
• 2014/15: Cité internationale des arts, Paris
• 2019: Villa Kujoyama, Kyoto[4]
• 2022 Villa Albertine, Miami, US[19]

Her works are part of public and private collections including: the Pompidou Center,[20] the Louis Vuitton Foundation,[21] the Paris Museum of Modern Art,[22] the National Centre of Plastic Arts in Paris, the Corporate Foundation of the Lafayette Galleries in France,[23] the Ettore Fico Museum[24] in Turin, Italy; and the Samdani Art Foundation, in Dhaka, Bangladesh[25]