This year’s prestigious Turner Prize is to be shared by all four shortlisted artists after they formed a collective to show solidarity at a time of global “political crisis,” in a shock win announced on Tuesday evening.
Oscar Murillo, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock and Tai Shani were all named winners at a ceremony at the Turner Contemporary gallery in the seaside town of Margate, in southeast England.
The four — who had not met each other before being shortlisted — would split the ￡40,000 (US$52,174) prize money for one of the world’s most prestigious awards for visual and contemporary art.
Photo: AP
British Vogue magazine editor Edward Enninful, who announced the prize, called the decision “incredible.”
Ahead of the announcement, the four had sent a plea to the judges explaining their reasons for forming the collective.
“At this time of political crisis in Britain and much of the world, when there is already so much that divides and isolates people and communities, we feel strongly motivated to use the occasion of the prize to make a collective statement in the name of commonality, multiplicity and solidarity — in art as in society,” they wrote.
More than 60,000 people have already seen the works by the four artists since they went on display at the Margate gallery in September.
“We each work with specific issues, but it doesn’t mean that we see those things in separation from each other,” Abu Hamdan said.
“The condition of a competition would actually turn the messages away from each other,” he added.
Turner Contemporary director Victoria Pomery has described their work as “fantastic exhibitions.”
Murillo had been the favorite to win. His work draws on his experiences of growing up in Colombia, before moving to London at age 11.
He combines his roots in Latin America with Western art, to create sculptures, models and vividly painted abstract canvasses for multimedia installations.
“We have very strong individual voices, but somehow the prize needed to be concluded in this way,” he said after the announcement.
Abu Hamdan is based in Beirut. Part of his submission for the coveted prize involved recreating the acoustic memories of former inmates of a Syrian prison.
Cammock’s film The Long Note examines the different roles and involvement of women in the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland in 1968. She is based in London.
London-based Shani described her submission as an “expanded psychedelic” adaptation of Christine de Pizan’s 15th work The Book of the City of Ladies.
Her work, which was nearly five years in the making, features 12 imagined characters on film and live performance to explore feminism and power structures.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS