Artist Johanna Mirabel and Galerie Nathalie Obadia (Paris, Brussels) have received the 2024 CPGA – Étant donnés prize. Awarded for the third time, the annual prize recognizes the significant artistic contributions of a French or France-based living artist and their gallery with USD 15,000 to be shared equally. The award is a joint initiative between the French organization Comité Professionnel des Galeries d’Art and Villa Albertine, a cultural institution that supports exchanges in arts and ideas between the United States, France, and beyond.

To select this year’s winner, a group of esteemed international curators and collectors walked the halls of Art Basel Miami Beach to review the applicants’ booths. Any gallery presenting at least one work by a French or France-based artist at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024 was eligible to apply before the start of the fair. During a lunchtime deliberation, the jury selected Mirabel, a French artist with Guyanese heritage, and her presentation at Galerie Nathalie Obadia as the standout from among over 25 applications. They were particularly impressed by the artist’s figurative paintings, often set in dreamlike domestic spaces, and her recent body of work, ‘Adieu la chair’, which explores the European tradition of Carnival.

‘We were struck by Johanna Mirabel’s technical virtuosity, the scale of her work, and her chosen subject of Carnival,’ the jury noted, along with ‘the promise of her practice and the commitment of Galerie Nathalie Obadia to supporting an artist at the dawn of an exciting career.’

This year’s jury was composed of Daisy Desrosiers, the director and chief curator of the GUND Gallery at Kenyon College; Celia Sredni de Birbragher, a Colombian editor, researcher, collector, artist, critic, leader, and entrepreneur; Julia Halperin, a New York-based journalist and art critic; Paul Leong, collector, officer at the Contemporary Arts Council of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and co-chair of the FCA Friends (Foundation for Contemporary Arts); and François Sarkozy, collector and co-founder of the CMS Collection.

Mirabel, who was born in 1991 in Colombes, France, and lives and works in Paris, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia continue the prize’s distinguished legacy. The prior recipients were Colombian Paris-based artist Daniel Otero Torres and the gallery mor charpentier (Paris, Bogotá) in 2023 and French artist Julien Creuzet and the galleries Andrew Kreps (New York) and High Art (Paris, Arles) in 2024.