THE WINNER OF FORTHCOMING Artes Mundi Prize will be an artist of color. A shortlist of six artists vying for the ninth edition of the biennial prize was announced Sept. 24. The artists are Firelei Báez (Dominican Republic), Dineo Seshee Bopape (South Africa), Meiro Koizumi (Japan), Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (Puerto Rico), Prabhakar Pachpute (India), Carrie Mae Weems (United States)
The winner will be named in January 2021 during a four-month exhibition from October 2020 to February 2021 at National Museum Cardiff. The prize includes 40,000 British Pounds (about $50,000).
Based in Cardiff, Wales in the UK, Artes Mundi is an “internationally focused arts organization that identifies, recognizes and supports contemporary visual artists who engage with the human condition, social reality and lived experience.” Nigel Prince was appointed director of Artes Mundi in May.
“We are delighted to announce the shortlist of artists selected for Artes Mundi 9 who individually produce such compelling and distinctive bodies of work,” Prince said in a statement. “In prompting us to critically reflect on what it means to exist in this world in all its complexity, their practices speak to and engage with some of the most urgent issues of our time.”
“In prompting us to critically reflect on what it means to exist in this world in all its complexity, their practices speak to and engage with some of the most urgent issues of our time.” — Artes Mundi Director Nigel Priince
The selected artists represent a diversity of practices, working in a range of mediums, addressing a variety of subjects:
- makes intricate works on paper and canvas as well as large scale sculpture. Through a convergence of interest in anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity and women’s work; her art explores the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies, which have an ability to live with cultural ambiguities and use them to build psychological and even metaphysical defenses against cultural invasions. She was shortlisted for the Future Generation Prize 2017. Born in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, Baez and lives and works in New York.
The shortlisted artists emerged from a pool of more than 500 nominations representing 60 countries. The selections were made by a three-person jury. The panel members were Cosmin Costinas, executive director and curator of Para Site in Hong Kong and artistic director of Kathmandu Triennale 2020; Elvira Dyangani-Ose, director of The Showroom gallery in London; and Rachel Kent, chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney.
In January, Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) was announced as the winner of Artes Mundi 8, with Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria/Belgium), among the shortlisted artists. Previous winners include British artist John Akomfrah (Artes Mundi 7) and American artist Theaster Gates (Artes Mundi 6). CT
