Artes Mundi announces the two Selectors for its 2008 international arts Prize and Exhibition
31 May 2007
Artes Mundi – the biennial international contemporary visual arts initiative launched in 2004 - has today announced the names of the two independent Selectors who will shortlist the eight artists for Artes Mundi’s third Exhibition and Prize in 2008. They are Olabisi Silva. from Nigeria who co-curated the Dakar Biennale in 2006 and Isabel Carlos from Portugal, who was the Artistic Director of the Sydney Biennale in 2004.
Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management will fund the Selectors’ world travel and research, in a new sponsorship deal also announced today.
The task of the two Selectors will be to draw up a Shortlist of eight artists from around the world who represent the very best emerging, contemporary talent. Their starting point is over 400 nominations submitted by leading curators, artists and arts professional from more than 65 countries, plus their own personal nominations and a series of studio visits. The Selectors have until the end of September to make their decision when the final shortlist of eight artists will be announced. “We ask the Selectors to be rigorous and to make their selection based on two distinct criteria – artists who have achieved recognition in their own country or sphere and are now emerging internationally, and those artists whose work explores humanity and the human condition” said Artes Mundi’s Artistic Director Tessa Jackson.
The £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize, one of the largest prizes for an individual artist, will be awarded in April 2008. The inaugural Artes Mundi Prize (2004) was awarded to Chinese artist Xu Bing, and the second Artes Mundi Prize (2006) awarded to Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila.
This year’s shortlisted artists will present their work at the third Artes Mundi Exhibition at National Museum Cardiff, Wales from 15th March to 8th June 2008.
In the second announcement today Artes Mundi is delighted that Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management will sponsor the global artist selection process by covering the costs of the Selectors’ world travel and research. Nick Tucker, Market Leader for UK and Ireland, Merrill Lynch GPC EMEA said “Merrill Lynch is proud to be sponsoring Artes Mundi’s mission to select contemporary artists from across the world. The project celebrates cultural diversity and has the potential to open up thinking and create debate. It is a bold and exciting initiative launched from Wales, a part of the UK that is increasingly important to us.”
Notes to Editors
Artes Mundi is an international contemporary visual arts initiative, committed to recognising and showing some of the most exciting, emerging artists from around the world and celebrating visual culture within an international context. It highlights how artists comment on the world from very different cultural perspectives and gathers work that speaks about humanity, the human form and the human condition.
Isabel Carlos is a free-lance art curator and critic based in Lisbon. She was the Artistic Director of the Sydney Biennale in 2004 On Reason and Emotion and the curator of the Portuguese Pavilion at the 2005 Venice Biennale, presenting a one person show by Helena Almeida. She was the Founder and Deputy Director of the Instituto de Arte Contemporanea (IAC) in Lisbon between 1996 and 2001.
Olabisi Silva is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos, a new visual arts initiative that will launch later this year. She was one of several international curators responsible for the artistic content of the Dakar Biennale in 2006 and in 2007 she will curate Telling, an exhibition of contemporary Finnish photography at the 7th African photography Biennale in Bamako (November 2007) and co-curate the inaugural exhibition of contemporary African Art at the National Museum Mali, Bamako (September 2007).
The shortlist of artists for Artes Mundi 3 will be announced at the end of September 2007.
The Artes Mundi exhibition features eight artists and is presented every two years in Cardiff after an international nomination process and further global research, undertaken by two independent selectors. A separate independent panel of five judges awards the £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize to one of the exhibiting artists. The Derek Williams Trust provides funding in order that works by some of the shortlisted artists can be purchased for the national collections of Wales.
The Artes Mundi 3 Exhibition opens at the National Museum Cardiff on March 15th 2008 and continues until June 8th 2008. The Prize will be awarded in April 2008.
Artes Mundi was founded by William Wilkins CBE (Chairman) and Tessa Jackson (Artistic Director) in 2002. It was established with the support of the Welsh Assembly Government, the City of Cardiff, Arts Council of Wales, BBC Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales, all of whom remain as partners.
Merrill Lynch. Merrill Lynch is one of the world's leading wealth management, capital markets and advisory companies with offices in 37 countries and territories and total client assets of approximately $1.6 trillion. As an investment bank, it is a leading global trader and underwriter of securities and derivatives across a broad range of asset classes and serves as a strategic advisor to corporations, governments, institutions and individuals worldwide. Merrill Lynch owns approximately half of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest publicly traded investment management companies with more than $1 trillion in assets under management. For more information on Merrill Lynch, please visit www.ml.com
For further information please contact:
Annie Bacon
Communications
Artes Mundi
E: anniebacon@mac.com
Tel: +44 (0) 7974 755 164
Nat Slow
Tel: +44 (0) 2920 555300
E: natalieslow@artesmundi.org