Johanna Mirabel and her Galerie Nathalie Obadia win the CPGA – Etant donnés 2024 prize at Art Basel, Miami Beach
at Art Basel, Miami Beach

Johanna Mirabel and Galerie Nathalie Obadia win the Prix CPGA – Étant donnés 2024, a prize designed to strengthen ties between France and the United States in the field of contemporary art and highlight the essential role of galleries in promoting French artistic creation on the international scene.

“We were impressed by Johanna Mirabel’s technical virtuosity, the format of her works and the carnival theme,” said the jury. “[But also] by the potential of her practice and the commitment of Galerie Nathalie Obadia to accompany her promising career.”

Born in Colombes in 1991, Johanna Mirabel is currently based in Paris. A French painter of Guyanese origin, she creates ethereal interior scenes, inhabited by languid figures. Johanna Mirabel’s paintings depict characters occupying domestic spaces that are often open to a dreamlike exterior. The interiors in which the figures evolve call on the artist’s memories, from Guyanese houses to New York brownstones from the Harlem Renaissance. Childhood memories and recent experiences converse at the heart of the pictorial surface, scaffolding syncretic universes.

“I’m honored to have received the Étant donnés prize, as I’m myself keen to further my research in the United States as part of a project based on carnival culture, between New York, New Orleans and Miami”. – Johanna Mirabel

Since opening its first gallery in Paris in 1993, followed by a gallery in Brussels in 2008 and a second Parisian space in 2013, Galerie Nathalie Obadia has exhibited emerging and established artists from the international contemporary scene. In autumn 2021, the gallery inaugurated a new space in the Matignon Saint-Honoré district of Paris. For many years, the gallery has been promoting artists to institutions in France and abroad, while also contributing to the rediscovery of lost artists such as Martin Barré, Josep Grau-Garriga and Seydou Keita.