Reiffers Art Initiatives - "1000 milliards d'images" Prize exhibition 2025
"1000 milliards d'images" is the fourth group exhibition of the Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize.
The image is their raw material, their playground for experimenting with new forms and imagining alternative types of narratives. Whether photographic or video-based, virtual or real, found on social media or created ex nihilo, this visual matter is transformed in their hands, hybridized and rearranged, unafraid to venture into the strange and uncanny to jolt us from our stupor in the face of the endless deluge of a thousand billion images that flood our daily lives.
In the films of Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, 3D animation merges with live action. Their “impure” cinema resists classification and tonal boundaries—ranging from absurdity to extreme violence, from cynicism to naivety. The photographs of Jean-Vincent Simonet, meanwhile, blur the lines of their origin: hand-painted by the artist or created by artificial intelligence? With him, the image regains its plasticity and seems to seek a renewed aura, reconciled with the 21st century.
Anhar Salem, on her part, embraces those images that show too much, omnipresent on social networks and in continuous flow. She questions their power in our societies, their influence on our lifestyles and collective imaginations. Finally, with Nanténé Traoré, the photographic print is transferred onto velvet, giving it a mysterious, shifting materiality. The image seems to vanish, to move toward abstraction. Could it be that the image is more powerful when it doesn’t show?
Anhar Salem is the winner of the 2025 Reiffers Art Initiatives Prize.
Born in 1993 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Anhar Salem lives and works between Jeddah and Paris. A self-taught artist, she first studied computer science at the Arab Open University in Jeddah before pursuing a postgraduate program at Le Fresnoy – Studio national des arts contemporains in Tourcoing, France. Drawing on her personal experience with social media and the endless streams of images available online, Anhar Salem explores themes such as self-representation and the virtual extension of our lives on social networks.
Reiffers Art Initiatives is a foundation created to support young contemporary creation and cultural diversity.
Reiffers Art Initiatives’ mission is to support France’s new art scene and give it international visibility. It finances and gives exposure to thirty emerging artists every year, who will influence tomorrow’s contemporary art scene.
Other projects
Reiffers Initiatives - Mentorship Exhibition 2025
The fifth Reiffers Initiatives Mentorship Exhibition opens on October 24 during Art Basel, featuring a unique exhibition by Daniel Buren and Miles Greenberg.
On the occasion of Mentorship 2025, Daniel Buren presents a permanent in situ work entitled ‘La Façade aux Acacias,’ entirely covering the Reiffers Initiatives Foundation venue at 30 rue des Acacias, Paris 17th.
Daniel Buren’s ‘La Façade aux Acacias’ covers the entire façade with large isosceles triangles and zigzagging diagonals, creating a dynamic interplay between geometry, light, and the surrounding cityscape. Alongside this, he presents a second in situ work, ‘New Images of the Sky.’ Both works, created to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the mentorship program, transform the building into an artistic canvas and invite viewers to see urban space in a new way.
As a mentee in the 2025 program, Miles Greenberg presents new monumental aluminum cast sculptures and a never-before-seen performance by Yseult. His exhibition, ‘Gods of Solaris,’ explores the dialogue between his sculptural and performative practices.
His large-scale immersive works place the body at the center, exploring its poetics through slowness, the decomposition of form, and the lens of the African diaspora. His extreme performances become sculptures and videos, creating ritual spaces where audiences experience emotions beyond language.
Reiffers Art Initiatives is a foundation created to support young contemporary creation and cultural diversity.
Reiffers Art Initiatives’ mission is to support France’s new art scene and give it international visibility. It finances and gives exposure to thirty emerging artists every year, who will influence tomorrow’s contemporary art scene.
Reiffers Art Initiatives - Mentorship Exhibition 2024
The fourth exhibition of the Reiffers Art Initiatives mentorship program at Art Basel Paris.
Ugo Rondinone is the mentor of artist Tarek Lakhrissi for the fourth edition of the 2024 Reiffers Art Initiatives mentorship program. The exhibition will be presented at the Reiffers Art Center on the occasion of Art Basel Paris.
A leading figure in contemporary art, Ugo Rondinone takes on the role of Reiffers Art Initiatives mentor in 2024. Celebrated by the world’s leading museums (MoMA PS1, Centre Pompidou, Whitechapel Gallery, Château de Versailles, etc.), Ugo Rondinone is a renowned multidisciplinary artist, poet, collector and curator.
A visual artist and poet, Tarek Lakhrissi develops his practice around different media such as writing, performance, video and sculpture.
Words and language are the source of his work. Exploring poetry, popular culture and affects, Tarek Lakhrissi’s work redefines an emancipating imagination and anticipates an equally emancipating future.
Reiffers Art Initiatives is a foundation created to support young contemporary creation and cultural diversity.
Reiffers Art Initiatives’ mission is to support France’s new art scene and give it international visibility. It finances and gives exposure to thirty emerging artists every year, who will influence tomorrow’s contemporary art scene.