Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc has created a group of works within the far-flung context of biographical research into ethnographical objects collected by his grandfather Emile Abonnenc, whose collecting activities in the early 1930s were inspired by the theories of the ethnographer Michel Leiris. In his Basel installation, the artist concentrates on the analysis of a monumental statue of Victor Schœlcher in French Guiana, representing the French colonial civil servant as a heroic liberator of the slaves. The artist’s subtle aesthetic interventions reveal the complexity of the relationship between a patronizing and a fetishizing approach. Abonnenc‘s visual analyses of various colonial and postcolonial artifacts draw attention to the many different ways of interpreting relations between past and present as well as personal and collective history.

In addition to the cash prize, Baloise acquires a group of works by the award winners and donates them to two important European museums. The works of Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc were presented to the collection of the MMK Frankfurt, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.

Gallery: Marcelle Alix, Paris

Jury members:
Marie-Noëlle Farcy, Curator/Head of Collection, MUDAM, Luxembourg; Susanne Gaensheimer, Director MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt a.M.; Joanna Mytkowska, Director Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Professor Wilhelm Schürmann, Herzogenrath and Martin Schwander, Fine Art Advisor of Baloise, Chairman of the jury.