2023 Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival
Image: Lahem, Modernity's Fracture: The Odyssey of Returning Hometown, 2013-2018.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lahem
Jimei x Arles Discovery Award
Spanning various locations in the Jimei District of Xiamen, China, the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival aims to nurture the creation, curation, and study of Chinese photography. The festival presented its Discovery Award to artist Lahem (Luo Xin) for his exhibition Modernity's Fracture: The Odyssey of Returning Hometown, which featured photography, video, and installations. "The artist's adept use of photography to navigate the return to their hometown amidst this rapidly evolving era reflects a nuanced exploration of the intricate ties between individuality, hometown, urban life, memory, and identity," said the jury. "He examines the inevitable cycles and links between humans and nature, life, and death."
Image: Gan Yingying and Zhou Yichen, The Via Combusta.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Gan Yingying and Zhou Yichen
Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image
The Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image went to Gan Yingying and Zhou Yichen for their exhibition The Via Combusta. As time progressed, humans are increasingly trapped by the very 'fire' of technology. The exhibition, weaves together the 'fire' of technology and the 'fire' of spirit, and invites us to embark on a journey into the realm where technology and human spirit intermingle. The jury commended the team for selecting "a vital and contemporary theme experienced both by the curators themselves and their community."
About the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival
Sigg Prize 2023
Image: Exhibition view: The Northeast Tetralogy at the Sigg Prize 2023 (2018–2021).
Courtesy M+, Hong Kong. Photo: Dan Leung.
ART
Wang Tuo
Sigg Prize
M+ announced Wang Tuo the winner of the Sigg Prize 2023. Wang’s work has previously taken up topics such as censorship in China and the recent history of art-making in the country. The artist himself has said that he would have encountered difficulties if he tried to exhibit some of his work in mainland China. He won the prize for The Northeast Tetralogy, a multichannel installation made up of four videos that each traverse different parts of Chinese history, exploring how certain events have been translated across time. In a statement, the jury praised how the work’s "interweaving of multi-dimensional narratives creates an elegant and resonating cinematic experience that fuses historical events and speculative narratives, offering deep contemplation on the relationship between archive and fiction."
junger westen 2023
Image: Mona Schulzek, Outer Space Transmitter, mixed media, 350x340x300 cm, 2021.
Photo: Caroline Schlüter
ART
Mona Schulzek
junger westen
German artist Mona Schulzek is the winner of the junger westen 2023 art prize. For the jury, her work illustrates what a sculptural practice can achieve today: giving contemporary impulses to what we are trying to understand as space. Her works address discourses immanent to the art system, but go beyond them to extend into various areas of life, using different media and disciplines. For example, her Outer Space Transmitter works with a space that surrounds us, which both actually exists and addresses the imaginary: outer space. Her art is all-encompassing, from the construction of a transmitter as a sculptural object, to the development of an 'extraterrestrial alphabet', to obtaining a certified radio licence.
e-flux Film Award
Image: Maurício Chades, still from Cemitério Verde [Green Cemetery], Brazil, 2023, 25 min, digital video.
ART
Maurício Chades
First prize
Maurício Chades, an artist and filmmaker from Brazil, is the First prize winner of the inaugural e-flux Film Award, for his film Cemitério Verde [Green Cemetery] (2023). The film tells the story of Lavina, who retires and buys a house in a small city in the middle of a Brazilian savanna. Not even grass would grow on the degraded soil of her backyard. So she starts to plant an agroforestry garden offering each seedling to a loved one who passed away.
FRAME Awards
Image: Luo Studio, Two Paper Houses, Zhengzhou Airport, China, 2023. Photo: Jin Weiqi
DESIGN
Two Paper Houses by Luo Studio
Winner of the Month for December
Two Paper Houses is December’s FRAME Awards winner, a Luo Studio-designed exhibition space in China’s Zhengzhou Airport made from recyclable corrugated cardboard and metal. Repurposing a dormant commercial complex, Luo Studio explores how cardboard can provide sustainable, easy-to-build space. Luo Studio’s design encourages rapid assembly and repeated, long-term reuse beyond the exhibition.
