Gina Proenza. You and Your Gang
Manor Art Prize 2024 Vaud
To mark the award of the Manor Vaud Cultural Prize, Gina Proenza is taking over the Espace Projet for a brand new exhibition: she devises a polyphonic installation that questions the positions of those who pronounce or receive a sentence.
Gina Proenza (*1994 in Bogotá; lives and works in Lausanne) develops narratives in which each artwork functions like a clue, an independent creation while simultaneously being part and parcel of a whole that we are meant to decipher. Gargoyles that stick out motorised tongues, words that are spelled out on the balls of abacus-like sculptures, projected on the wall, or transformed into onomatopoeia in neon lights. Language, whether oral, written, allegorical, or anatomical, lies at the heart of her practice.
For her show in MCBA’s Espace Projet, Gina Proenza takes as her main material a historical source that has already fuelled other recent pieces. She devises a polyphonic installation that questions the positions of those who pronounce or receive a sentence. The artist returns to those who have been excluded an opportunity to be heard, opening up spaces for imaging what plays out between times that are apparently remote from one other, and species that are distinct in principle.
A graduate in Visual Arts from Lausanne’s École cantonale d’art (ECAL), Gina Proenza has exhibited her work in a number of solo shows, including at the Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen (2022), CAN, the Centre d’art Neuchâtel (2020), and the Centre Culturel Suisse of Paris (2018).
Exhibition curator: Nicole Schweizer, curator of contemporary art, MCBA
The Manor Art Prize
Created in 1982 to promote young Swiss talent, the Manor Art Prize is awarded every two years by a jury (for the Manor Art Prize Vaud, the artists are selected from a shortlist drawn up by MCBA). Coming at a key moment in the career of emerging artists, the prize makes it possible to offer winners a decisive show of support for their work. In this way, the prize helps to foster and promote the regional contemporary art scene in the Canton of Vaud. The Manor Art Culture Vaud has been awarded to the following artists: Laurent Huber (1989), Alain Huck (1990), Laurence Pittet (1991), Bernard Voïta (1994), Ariane Epars (1996), Anne Peverelli (1998), Nicolas Savary (2001), Philippe Decrauzat (2002), Didier Rittener (2005), Catherine Leutenegger (2006), Aloïs Godinat (2009), Laurent Kropf (2011), Julian Charrière (2014), Annaïk Lou Pitteloud (2016), Anne Rochat (2020), and Sarah Margnetti (2022).
The jury of the Manor Art Prize 2024 Vaud
Didier Rittener, artist, Lausanne
Séverine Fromaigeat, curator, Geneva
Nicolas Brulhart, director of Fri-Art, Fribourg
Pierre André Maus, Maus Frères SA
Chantal Prod’Hom, Lausanne
