Sharjah: The names of the seven prize winners of the Sharjah Biennial 11 were announced by the Sharjah Art Foundation (SAF) at the event’s opening night for this year’s prize totalling $40,000.
The winners are Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Chai Siri, Tiffany Chung, Wael Shawky, Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, Magdi Mostafa, and Fumito Urabe.
The 2013 prize jurors were Bassam Al Baroni, a curator and art critic based in Alexandria, Egypt; Hu Fang, the co-founder and artistic director of Vitamin Creative Space and the Pavilion in Beijing, China; and Sarat Maharaj, Professor of Visual Art and Knowledge Systems, Lund University and the Malmö Art Academies in Sweden.
Among the winners were two artists devoted to independent and experimental film-making, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Chai Siri who were given the award for an outstanding contribution to SB11. The artists were awarded for the video Dilbar (2013), which is a portrait of a Bangladeshi builder working on the new art spaces of the Sharjah Art Foundation.
Also awarded for their exceptional contribution to SB11 were Tiffany Chung for her ink- and oil-based coloured cartographic drawing and installation works which examined conflict, migration, urban progress, and transformation in relation to history and cultural memory, and Wael Shawky for Dictums 10:120, a multi-part project in which a chorus performs a traditional qawwali song, comprising fragments of curatorial text from the last Sharjah Biennial, translated into Urdu.
A special recognition award was also presented to Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, who has had a long career creating work with a strong connection to the history of Iranian reverse-glass painting and mirror mosaics, a craft traditionally passed on from father to son.
Two other artists were also awarded, Magdi Mustafa, for sounds cells: FRIDAYS (2010), an abstract evocation of the artist’s Cairo neighbourhood, Ardellawa, as heard on Fridays, and Fumito Urabe, for Drifting Through (2013), an installation of found objects that explores the intersection of Eastern philosophy and contemporary art.
Following the theme Re:emerge - Towards a New Cultural Cartography, the Sharjah Biennial 11 which opened on March 13, will run until May 13 at Sharjah’s Heritage Area.
