WINNERS
2026-2027
Congratulations to the 5 winners of the second edition of the Bastille Art Prize!
This new edition confirms the great enthusiasm seen last year, and I would first like to thank all the participating artists for daring to entrust us with their life's work.
I can echo the jury's sentiments in stating that we were touched by approaches that were sensitive, profound, and embodied at every level. Between creative boldness, palpable emotion, and impeccable technical skill, the artists have set the bar very high.
Thanks to your rich and varied artistic worlds, the jury was able to discover projects of remarkable quality, among which the choices were hard-fought.
So, a huge congratulations to this year's 5 winners: Léo Souton, Lou de Pray, Romane Loriot, Evantias Chaudat, and Sandrine Castel!
These winners will be exhibited at the Galerie Bessaud from January 14 to February 14, 2027.
Thank you again to all the participants for your incredible work.
Arthur Bessaud, creator of the Bastille Art Prize
Léo Souton
A graduate of ENSA Paris-Belleville, Léo Souton develops a sculptural practice that questions the nature of materials.
Inherited from his architectural training, the notion of "inhabiting" is transposed into his work. This artistic stance aims to bear witness to an era weakened by a lack of action and awareness. He explores, picks up, and collects discarded materials and objects, which he then transforms and assembles. Gesture by gesture, he shapes them, embracing their unique qualities and revealing their inherent characteristics.
Lou de Pray
Working embroidery like a painting, Lou de Pray seeks to tell of suspended moments, devoid of temporal markers.
Her delicate and luminous compositions play with scales of perception—between a distant view, a close-up detail, and a sense of the undefined. Figurative scenes that cultivate ambiguity to better stimulate the imagination.
Her work explores a fascinating paradox, contrasting the rigor and slowness of the technique with the softness of the final piece. Through the precision of her hand, the artist infuses her creations with a subtle vibration, imbued with lightness and fragility.
Romane Loriot
Trained in ceramics in Sèvres and later at the Le Mans School of Art and Design, Romane Loriot celebrates the quiet beauty of shared resources.
Guided by the living world, she develops her practice by creating her own medium. Convinced that research and experimentation can turn waste into a resource, she has developed a low-impact manufacturing process to transform food waste into biomaterials.
Her work reflects the territories she works in and aims to make the common good visible and desirable. Her research explores cycles, gestures, and transformations, encouraging us to care for what we commonly consider waste and to see it in a new light.
Sandrine Castel
Coming from a rural family, Sandrine Castel draws her inspiration directly from nature, a distant echo of the hours she once spent in the fields. Her works reveal suggested landscapes, places that the eye can distinguish without ever being able to formally identify them, whether observed at the corner of the street or in the four corners of the world.
Favoring wide shots, she infuses her canvases with a unique vibration. Fascinated by the immensity of nature - this inexhaustible, surprising and tireless model -, she makes it her favorite motif.
Evantias Chaudat
A multidisciplinary artist and graduate of the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (Strasbourg), Evantias Chaudat places the concepts of nature and ecology at the heart of her practice.
Her work reflects a quest for organic communion between the infinitely large of the stars and the infinitely small of particles, through the visible bodies of minerals and plants. Her current research focuses on the very making of film photography and its links to extractivism and polluting industrial processes.
Her various collaborations with research institutes bring an almost scientific dimension to her work.