Prix pour la Photographie du musée du
quai Branly – Jacques Chirac 2026
Image: Sara Kontar, On the Edge of Home.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Sara Kontar
Prix pour la Photographie du musée du
quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Syrian artist, photographer and filmmaker Sara Kontar is recognised for her work On the Edge of Home, in which she explores the consequences of exile on the sense of belonging, memory and identity. A refugee in France, she has been traveling along the borders surrounding Syria since 2023, seeking to get as close as possible to a country she is now forbidden to enter. These border territories become the site of a reflection on the frontier, considered not only as a geopolitical boundary, but also as an intimate experience that profoundly shapes lives.
Image: Abhishek Rajaram Khedekar, DAPOLI, Lost and Found.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Abhishek Rajaram Khedekar
Prix pour la Photographie du musée du
quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Indian photographer Abhishek Rajaram Khedekar is recognised for his project DAPOLI, Lost and Found. Based in New Delhi, his work combines a documentary approach with surrealist techniques, particularly collage, in order to give a voice to those on the margins of society. Pushing the boundaries of photography, he conceives his projects as installations combining sculpture and sound art. In DAPOLI, Lost and Found, Abhishek Rajaram Khedekar returns to his home village to follow a generation of young people from fishing families who are facing economic and environmental upheavals that are threatening their way of life.
About the Prix pour la Photographie du musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac
Wheelwright Prize 2026
Image: Courtesy of Ellen Peirson.
DESIGN
Ellen Peirson
Wheelwright Prize
Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) has named Ellen Peirson the winner of the 2026 Wheelwright Prize. Peirson’s project, Ultra-Processed Kitchens: Infrastructures of Extraction in the Home, advances from the premise that the built form of the private home is a matter of public concern. By analyzing kitchens as “mineral landscapes” comprising materials such as clay, gypsum, and silica, Peirson examines how these sites of domesticity are entangled with extraction, petrochemical dependence, and waste. Her project dissects a typical kitchen’s materials, supply chains, aspirations, and tastes, and proposes an alternative: kitchens that can support well-being and sustain ecological limits through an aesthetic of reuse and care.
Prix de l'Intime RPBB / Photo Doc 2026
Image: © Salomé Hévin, Misto series.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Salomé Hévin
Prix de l'Intime RPBB / Photo Doc
Salomé Hévin is the winner of the Prix de l'Intime RPBB / Photo Doc 2026 for her series Misto, created during one of her stays in Kyiv. "To describe what has become of this city, where I lived for three years – this city that holds such a special place in my heart – poetic writing appeared to me as the only possible way. And perhaps the place I depict through my images is a ghostly double of the one so many people talk about, a space beyond reality…," confides Salomé Hévin.
About the Prix de l'Intime RPBB / Photo Doc
Bourse Dynamo ! 2026
Image: Rye straw covering surface, Thomas Guillard in collaboration with Marie Baffard.
ENSCI-Les Ateliers degree project directed by Samy Rio, 2021. © Thomas Guillard
DESIGN
Thomas Guillard
Bourse Dynamo !
Thomas Guillard is the winner of the Bourse Dynamo ! 2026 for his project Fournitures agricoles végétales (Plant-based agricultural supplies), a project he has been working on since 2021, as part of a degree project at ENSCI-Les Ateliers. Based in Normandy, he explores solutions to eliminate plastics and biopolymers in agricultural uses by designing supplies made from plant-based resources. In 2025, he published a catalogue that serves both as a practical tool and a presentation of his research, bringing together 80 prototypes. To continue this work and encourage the integration of these innovations into professional agricultural practices, Thomas Guillard applied for the Bourse Dynamo ! to develop three objects.
Han Nefkens Foundation — Mediterranean
Video Art Production Grant 2026
Image: Valentin Noujaïm, To Exist Under Permanent Suspicion (still), 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
ART
Valentin Noujaïm
Han Nefkens Foundation — Mediterranean
Video Art Production Grant
Valentin Noujaïm (b. 1991, France/Lebanon) is the recipient of the first edition of the Han Nefkens Foundation — Mediterranean Video Art Production Grant. The Jury stated: "Valentin Noujaïm’s films offer a distinctive approach to the city and architecture, treating them not only as physical environments and spaces but as living organisms shaped by memory, surveillance, and systems of social control. Through a compelling interplay of image and sound, he creates deeply human and poignant, poetic reflections on contemporary urban life, addressing timely questions of gentrification, corporate aesthetics, alienation, displacement, and belonging."
About the Han Nefkens Foundation — Mediterranean Video Art Production Grant
2026 G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation Art Prize
Image: Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett, Chronotopia (detail), 2026. Stainless steal and optical lenses, Minos Palace Resort.
ART
Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett
G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation Art Prize
The G. & A. Mamidakis Foundation has announced the winners of the 2026 Art Prize. Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett, from Canada, won the prize for their Chronotopia project. Chronotopia is a large-scale, site-specific installation drawing from relationships between Crete and water, light, space, and time. The piece is composed of layers of optical lenses, wrapped in two arching sails of light. The installation invites viewers to move through the space it creates and to observe the environment through the lenses.
