Angelika Markul awarded the 2016 Coal Prize

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Polish artist Angelika Markul is the recipient of this year’s edition of the COAL Prize, awarded every year to artists whose work engages with the the environmental issues of our time, “a cultural challenge that is determined by our individual and collective behaviour” as defined by its organizers.

The prize, created in 2010 and endowed with € 5,000, includes a € 3,500 budget for the realization of the proposed project as part of a residency at the Domaine de Beval in the French département of Ardennes, which is largely covered in dense forests. The residency, supported by the François Sommer Foundation, allows awardees to work on their project whilst residing in a “real observatory of rural and wild life”.

Markul, represented by Genevan Gallery Laurence Bernard and by LETO Gallery in Poland, works and lives between her home country and Paris. Her work, engages deeply with the most pressing environmental issues — including the impact of nuclear power on Chernobyl, documented in her film Bambi in Chernobyl, awarded the Prix SAM for contemporary art in 2012.

Having travelled to the most hostile corners of the planet, Markul continues to explore the harrowing and destructive consequences of human activity in the post-industrial era. Her work has been exhibited, among others, at The Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, (2008)  and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. (2013, 2014) She is currently at Gallery Laurence Bernard with the exhibition “Excavations of the Future”, running until November, 1.