The Rencontres d’Arles is opening its call for applications for the 2025 Discovery Award, part of the festival’s 56th edition.

The award’s aim is to promote the work of the selected artists, who will be showcased in the Discovery Award exhibition; and to reward the winning projects with the jury award of €15,000 and public award of €5,000.

Since 2021, the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award has integrated organizations that foster emerging artists—community spaces, independent exhibition sites, artist-run spaces, hybrid exhibition spaces, galleries, institutions, foundations—that clear the ground for, identify, and support artists. These organizations, important actors in supporting photography and artists, thus become mediators and discoverers, introducing to the Discovery Award artists whose work they have identified and followed.
These organizations are invited to propose an exhibition project by an artist they support whose work has recently been discovered or deserves to be seen by an international audience.

Projects selected for exhibition in the 2025 edition of the Rencontres d’Arles, in the Discovery Award exhibition, will be accompanied by the festival team and an exhibition curator invited by the Rencontres d’Arles.

This year, the curator invited by the Discovery Award 2025 is César González-Aguirre.

During opening week, a jury selected by the festival will determine the jury award, which rewards an artist and the artist’s supporting organization by an acquisition of artworks in the amount of €15,000; festival visitors will determine the public award, which rewards an artist and the artist’s supporting organization by an acquisition of artworks in the amount of €5,000.

The Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award has two missions:
→ Promotion of work by artists using images through exhibitions of projects shortlisted for the Discovery Award.
→ Reward of the winning artists & organizations.

The Discovery Award is part of the Rencontres d’Arles exhibition program. An exhibition curator is associated with the Discovery Award and will work on the development of the projects, from the selection to exhibition design, from concept to completion.
Each project selected will have an exhibition space of approximately 10 linear meters (50 m2). The exhibition design for this space will be determined after the selection is made, in cooperation with the exhibition curator and the Rencontres d’Arles team.

Each organization (gallery, art center, community space, independent exhibition site, institution) may present, in the form of an exhibition proposal, a single artist (or a single artists’ collective working as a single artistic entity).

The application must be submitted online before MIDNIGHT (PARIS TIME), november 18, 2024

→ The organization is responsible for:
– production of the works in ready-to-hang condition
– roundtrip transportation of the works to Arles or to Paris (in this latter case, the festival can provide of the transportation to Arles) and insurance of works during transportation
– supervision of the project with the artist, in coordination with the Rencontres d’Arles and the curator

The organization and/or artist agree to retrieve the works after the exhibition.

→ The Rencontres d’Arles will be responsible for:
– providing a production budget envelope of €3,000, for the production of the project exhibited
– insuring the works (for their production value) during their exhibition at the Rencontres d’Arles
– exhibition design
– mounting and dismantling of works
– the artist’s visit in Arles: 2 nights’ accommodation in Arles during opening week of the festival; and the artist’s roundtrip travel to Arles

Further information: www.rencontres-arles.com