Sans titre

Rubis Mécénat Prize

Saint-Eustache church, Paris

2026

Rémi Marcel

Rémi Marcel is the 2026 winner of the Rubis Mécénat Prize, in partnership with Beaux-Arts de Paris, which invites emerging artists from the school to create a new installation for the Church of Saint-Eustache. Accompanied by curator Oulimata Gueye, he presents a site-specific installation in autumn 2026.

Composed of two half-columns positioned on the south and north sides of the church, the motif of this installation embodies the dialogue that the building maintains with the natural elements outside: sun and rain. The two sculptures echo one another. One, in clay, houses a germination device in which wheat will grow throughout the exhibition. An irrigation system housed in the lower part of the column and protected by a glass barrier makes the process visible. On the north side stands its plaster double. Like a frozen imprint, it becomes the archaeological remnant of this living cycle.

 Together, the two sculptures inhabit the geographical and historical environment in which the church of Saint-Eustache developed, from the Halle au Blé (former grain market) to the vast underground network of today.

Rémi Marcel

Rémi Marcel was born in 2002 in Charente. After training as a cook and then a pastry chef, he changed course to join the Beaux-Arts de Paris, where he became part of Tatiana Trouvé's studio. There he developed an installation practice in which food becomes a material in its own right. Cooking becomes for him an aesthetic means, allowing him to create living devices that reflect cyclical processes. Rémi Marcel reveals active environments in which the audience becomes a participant. He considers himself a walker — creating from what surrounds him is essential. He seeks to immerse himself in places and to root himself within them in order to better inhabit them. His creative process is part of a way of life, a way of being in the world that does not place his different life experiences in any hierarchy. Everything contributes to one and the same artistic project, where forms emerge from simple, situated actions.