Guerlain and Korean artist Lee Ufan award inaugural art and environment prize

The French artist Djabril Boukhenaïssi has won the inaugural Guerlain x Lee Ufan Art & Environment Award; the prize was announced at the Paris+ par Art Basel fair, which opened yesterday at the Grand Palais Éphémère.

Guerlain, the French perfumery and beauty Maison, and the celebrated South Korean artist Lee Ufan's museum in Arles have teamed up to create a new award, the Art & Environment Prize, which will be given “annually to an artist whose work focuses on the fruitful and multi-faceted relationship between artistic creation and the environment”, according to an award statement.

“This ‘space-time’ [of a 6-8 week residency and production space in Arles] will allow [the artist] to carry out their artistic project as well as encounter people and institutions relevant to its implementation: meeting artists, profes­sionals from the art world and players on the ground who could reso­nate with their work, as well as the public,” the statement adds.

Boukhenaissi is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris.

“His work is essentially nourished by literature and music, and revolves around the notions of disappearance and fragility,” the award organisers say. He will also receive a solo exhibition next summer at Lee Ufan Arles, the permanent exhibition centre for the South Korean artist’s works in the south of France.

“Like Lee Ufan, Guerlain is forging ties with nature, increasing the number of meaningful partnerships and initiatives under the Guerlain for Bees conservation programme,” the project statement adds. Ufan said: “I want to build a bridge between this industrial society and original nature. And make people think about [this] relationship.”

Maison Guerlain presents another art project at its flagship store on the Champs-Elysées in Paris, marking the 170th anniversary of the Abeilles Bottle (or Bee Bottle) created for Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III. The exhibition Les Fleurs du Mal, named after the 19th-century poetry collection by Charles Baudelaire, includes works by 26 artists including Anselm Kiefer and Jennifer Stein.