Rémi Marcel: Prix Rubis Mécénat

Rémi Marcel, winner of the 2026 Rubis Mécénat Prize, presents an installation at the Church of Saint-Eustache, developed with the critical guidance of curator Oulimata Gueye.

Rémi Marcel’s installation enters into dialogue with the Church of Saint-Eustache, its architecture, and its place within the urban history of food.

The sculptural project evokes the church’s location at the heart of Les Halles, once known as the “belly of Paris.” Drawing inspiration from the church’s architecture, the artist installs two half-columns that support nothing, yet contain something. One houses a self-sustaining ecosystem in which wheat will germinate; the other is its frozen imprint.

The first half-column draws inspiration from the natural elements that have left their mark on the church, such as sunlight and rain. The second is its cast clay body, transformed into a mineral memory, much like an archaeological relic.

The installation recalls the former proximity of Paris’s largest food market, while stepping outside the city’s temporal rhythm to make space for practices that may now seem distant to us: those of farmers whose lives are governed by the cycles of harvest and germination.