Abraaj Capital Art Prize
The winners of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2012 are artists Taysir Batniji, Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Wael Shawky, Risham Syed, and Raed Yassin, with Guest Curator Nat Muller.
In a departure from earlier formats used in Art Dubai, the winning artworks were displayed together at Art Dubai in a unified exhibition curated by Nat Muller from The Netherlands, the selected Guest Curator for 2012. Muller titled the exhibition ‘Spectral Imprints’, focusing on the preoccupations the five projects share with narrating the past and the difficulties of representing something tangible of a moment in time. The artist and performer Raed Yassin, his work always playful, created a series of vases entitled China, a response to the Lebanese civil war and its aftermath. In her practice, Risham Syed focuses on the traces of cultural inheritance in her native Pakistan; with The Seven Seas she branched out to the broader MENASA region, charting Victorian trade routes – still relevant today - on quilts. Wael Shawky has built up a body of work focusing on the launch of the Crusades, and A Glimpse of Clean History is a powerful new development in this. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have formulated their project A Letter Can Always Reach its Destination after many years of research and documentation, commenting on the spam emails we receive daily. Personal history and memory are most eloquently demonstrated by Palestinian artist Taysir Batniji in his work To My Brother, a series of hand carvings from photographs on paper.
Taysir Batniji is from Palestine, and represented by Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg & Beirut and Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris; Joana Hadjithomas & Khalil Joreige, Lebanon (CRG Gallery, New York, In Situ / Fabienne Leclerc, Paris and The Third Line, Dubai); Wael Shawky, Egypt (Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg & Beirut); Risham Syed, Pakistan (Talwar Gallery, New York); and Raed Yassin, Lebanon (Kalfayan Galleries, Athens & Thessaloniki). Nat Muller is from the Netherlands.
The Abraaj Capital Art Prize was founded in 2008 and is in its fourth edition. The aim of the prize is to give talented artists the opportunity to break new ground and showcase new work that is reflective of the rich artistic and cultural heritage of the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia (MENASA) region, reflecting Abraaj Capital’s dedication to empowering potential. It rewards artists on the basis of a proposal rather than completed works-of-art. The winning artists then go on to create the works, which form part of the Abraaj Capital Collection.
To date works have been exhibited in the UAE at Art Dubai, the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and the Maraya Arts Centre, Sharjah; in the US at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; in Europe at City Hall, London and in Italy as part of an official collateral exhibition of the 54th Venice Biennale, ‘The Future of a Promise’.
For more information on the prize please visit abraajcapitalartprize.com.
Abraaj Capital Art Prize 2013 Call for Applications
Applications for artists are being accepted until March 31, 2012 for the fifth edition of the Abraaj Capital Art Prize: abraajcapitalartprize.com/apply
