BMW ART MAKERS: Opening of applications for the second edition of BMW Group's art patronage program dedicated to emerging creation and contemporary images.

• BMW Group France is launching the second edition of the BMW ART MAKERS, dedicated to emerging creation in the field of visual arts and contemporary images.
• Each year, the BMW ART MAKERS program selects an artist-curator duo to assist in the realization of an artistic creation project and its implementation in space.
• The prize money includes a grant of €10,000 for the artist and €8,000 for the curator as well as a research and production budget of €15,000.
• The work produced will be exhibited during the 2023 editions of the Rencontres d'Arles and Paris Photo, of which BMW is an official partner.
• The call for entries is open until November 22, 2022.
• The jury will announce the winning duo in December.

Paris. After 20 years of support for photography and 10 years of the BMW Residency, BMW Group France has given a new direction to its artistic support in 2021 and has reinvented its model. Still dedicated to emerging creation, experimentation and image, this program opens to the visual arts and offers a grant to an artist-curator duo as well as a budget for research and production of works.

The artist Arash Hanaei and the curator Morad Montazami were chosen as the winners of the first edition with the project "Suburban Hauntology" which was presented at the Rencontres d'Arles and will be exhibited at Paris Photo from November 10 to 13.

The call for applications for the second edition is open until November 22, 2022: https://bmw-art-makers.plateformecandidature.com/?language=en_GB

Within the BMW Group, the relationship between man and machine, creativity and innovation, support and commitment are strong values. Support because the sponsoring company is close to the artists. It follows them in their creative process, respects their vision, allows them to dare, and gives them the material and financial means to realize their project. Commitment because getting involved in cultural patronage is a matter of course: it opens an emotional conversation with our society. That's how everything becomes meaningful. The human approach is the heart of our approach.

This freedom to create is as essential for artists as it is for BMW, which creates breakthrough innovations for sustainable and responsible mobility.

BMW ART MAKERS: a support program dedicated to the experimental and visual art of all possibilities.
“Based on the observation that the world we live in is uncertain and that creation needs the long-term support of committed patrons, we have created the BMW ART MAKERS to offer an opportunity to emerging talents in the world of image. The program invites artists to take an alternative look at our environment and major societal challenges, through experimentation and the realization of a visual and multiform artistic project.” Vincent Salimon, CEO BMW Group France.

The new BMW ART MAKERS program supports projects based on the contemporary images, but which can explore all its dimensions and forms (photo, film, video, digital image, virtual), the choices and research of supports, reproduction techniques, and distribution networks.

BMW ART MAKERS: a grant and a production budget for an artist-curator duo that has chosen to carry out a joint artistic project.
Two heads are better than one. BMW ART MAKERS brings together and supports, within the framework of its call for projects, an emerging visual artist, and a curator, who must apply together. The strength of a duo that is both solid and complicit, this association is based on the trust and emulation that is essential to the success of a large-scale project from the first thought to the final work. Like the artist, the curator represents a fundamental element in the implementation of the artistic project as well as in its effective and concrete realization.

This is the first time, in France, that a program of this scope has allowed a curator to be supported by a grant for a project in the visual arts alongside an artist. The curator acts as artistic director, scenographer, designer, and is responsible for the realization of the project in the conditions of artistic requirement, deadline and budget described in the call for applications.

BMW ART MAKERS: a unique mentorship with the members of the jury.
And because great ideas need to be well surrounded to become reality, the members of the jury who select the projects are also mentors during the creative process. BMW Group France would like to thank these undisputed figures of the art world for having accepted this role with enthusiasm to raise the project and the work to the highest level.   

The BMW ART MAKERS jury is composed of:

• Florence Bourgeois, director of Paris Photo Fair
• Fabrice Bousteau, editorial director of Beaux-Arts Magazine
• Hervé Digne, president of POUSH Manifesto
• Fannie Escoulen, head of the Department of Photography, Ministry of Culture
• Elsa Janssen, director of the Yves Saint-Laurent Museum
• Christophe Onot-dit-Biot, writer
• Chantal Nedjib, image consultant through photography
• Christoph Wiesner, director of the Rencontres d'Arles

BMW ART MAKERS: financial and material support.
And because great ideas need to be financed and realized, BMW Group France offers:

• a grant of €10,000 to the artist
• a grant of €8,000 to the curator
• a budget of €15,000 for the research and production of the works
• the production of a solo exhibition
• mentoring by members of the jury
• communication support

BMW ART MAKERS: Think, create and above all... make it happen.
Research and experimentation are only the starting point of the artistic project. Once completed, BMW Group France will promote the project through events with international resonance in the art world such as Les Rencontres d'Arles or Paris Photo.

To respond to the call for applications.
Candidates can apply until November 22, 2022, on the dedicated platform: https://bmw-art-makers.plateformecandidature.com/?language=en_GB

Find more information on https://www.instagram.com/bmwgroupculture_fr/

The nominated duo will be contacted in early December to present their project to the jury and the winning duo will be announced in mid-December 2022. 

Arash Hanaei & Morad Montazami, first winners of the BMW ART MAKERS.  

The work carried out within the framework of the BMW ART MAKERS program has resulted in the installation "Suburban Hauntology" which, after being presented at the Rencontres d'Arles this summer, will be exhibited at Paris Photo from November 10 to 13, 2022.

This project questions the architectural utopias of the 70s, notably Jean Renaudie's Star building in Ivry-sur-Seine, while exploring new complex spaces such as the metaverse. How to rehabilitate these concrete ghosts in the context of reality?Combining several levels of reading, between still images, video and 3D design, the winning duo of BMW ART MAKERS, Arash Hanaei and Morad Montazami propose an immersive hybrid installation: digital drawings or Big Data Drawings, hologram, polysemic video Unblocked Avatars, and a virtual chess game between Mark Zuckerberg and the philosopher Mark Fischer. It is when the future becomes unimaginable that it becomes possible again.

BMW Group and art.
From Frank Stella to Jeff Koons, via Andy Warhol to the emerging artists of the BMW Residency, the BMW Group's commitment to culture over the past 50 years is unquestionable. All these years have been at the service of a new artistic vision, of the hybridization of techniques in all its forms, whether in the field of contemporary art, music, architecture, design, or photography, of which BMW France has been a patron since 2003. A hundred or so projects have been created throughout the world.