Museum MMK for Modern Art announces Christelle Oyiri as the recipient of the PONTOPREIS MMK 2024. The prize includes an exhibition at the ZOLLAMT MMK, starting on February 23, 2024, and is also endowed with 10,000 euros, which will be paid out as a scholarship.
The Jürgen Ponto-Stiftung awards the PONTOPREIS MMK every two years in cooperation with the MUSEUMMMKFÜR MODERNE KUNST. This is an extension of the cooperation that has been in place since 2007, which focuses on directly supporting the artists.
The jury, which consists of Susanne Pfeffer, director of MUSEUMMMKFÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt am Main, Ulrike Groos, director of Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, and Yasmil Raymond, rector of Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main, agrees: “In her work, Christelle Oyiri explores the tension between erasure and remembrance. By creating new mythologies and revisiting existing ones, Oyiri shows how French culture as well as Caribbean and West African rhythms, iconographies, and visual worlds influence and shape the present. The artist’s clear, free observations and analyses convincingly illustrate how everyday life and art—permeated by historical events and cultural imprints—are transformed into new forms.”
Image courtesy of Juergen Ponto Stiftung.
Christelle Oyiri is an arist and filmmaker born in 1992 in the Paris region, where she lives and works. She is also known as DJ and electronic music producer CRYSTALLMESS, and has performed around the world under this moniker. Over the past years, her work has appeared at Gladstone Gallery New York, Lafayette Anticipations, Haus der Kunst, and Tramway Glasgow amongst other venues. Oyiri engages with issues related to the collective memory of both forgotten and well-known mythologies, be they ancient or ultra-modern. An interdisciplinary artist, she performs worldwide as a DJ and producer of electronic music. Her work has been exhibited at Centre Pompidou, Lafayette Anticipations, Haus der Kunst, Auto Italia (London), LAND (Nomadic Division Los Angeles), Musée Espace Arlaud, Ars Electronica and HeK (Basel).
