Biennale Architettura 2023
Image: Pavilion of Brazil: Terra [Earth]/ Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares. © Matteo de Mayda
ARCHITECTURE
Brazilian Pavilion
Golden Lion for Best National Participation
The Brazilian Pavilion titled Terra [Earth], commissioned by José Olympio da Veiga Pereira, president of the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and curated by Gabriela de Matos and Paulo Tavares won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation at the Biennale Architettura 2023. The winning intervention was awarded for "a research exhibition and architectural intervention that center the philosophies and imaginaries of indigenous and black population towards modes of reparation.", said the jury.
Image: DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti. © Andrea Avezz
ARCHITECTURE
DAAR
Golden Lion for the best participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future
The Golden Lion for the best participant in the 18th Exhibition The Laboratory of the Future was awarded to DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) led by architects Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal (Stockholm; Bethlehem). The duo were awarded by the jury for "their long-standing commitment to deep political engagement with architectural and learning practices of decolonization in Palestine and Europe."
About the Biennale Architettura
Prix Picto 2023
Image: Série « Distanciation sociale » © Annabelle Foucher / Premier Prix – Grand Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode 2023
PHOTOGRAPHY
Annabelle Foucher
Grand Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode
Annabelle Foucher was awarded the Grand Prix Picto de la Photographie de Mode. Where the images want to sublimate, Annabelle Foucher wants above all to reveal; show the purity of the most organic things, the voluptuousness of everyday life. In an environment far from artifice, she does justice to everyday accessories, transforming them into artefacts. For her, beauty is first ordinary; she knows that the singularity of each thing can burst, as long as we first want to look at it attentively.
2023 Don’t Move, Improve!
Image: The Secret Garden Flat, Nic Howett Architect, Southwark, 2023.
ARCHITECTURE
The Secret Garden Flat by Nic Howett Architect
Home of the Year
The Don’t Move, Improve! 2023 winners have been revealed, celebrating home improvement projects from across London. The Secret Garden Flat by Nic Howett Architect was named Home of the Year. Needing more space for a family, with unaffordable property prices, and a reluctance to relocate, The Secret Garden Flat was self built by the architect and his partner to extend their home on a limited budget. With a palette of simple and modest materials that could be crafted with their own hands, they have added a new bedroom and a secluded garden studio where both can work from home.
Bennett Prize
Image: Shiqing Deng, Life, oil on linen, 2021, 66"x44".
ART
Shiqing Deng
Bennett Prize
Painter Shiqing Deng, of Brooklyn, New York, was named the winner of the third Bennett Prize. Shiqing Deng uses her paintings to explore the "relationships between virtual manipulated reality and the tangible world." This exploration takes the form of strange and mysterious narratives populated by small figurative groups or single actors. Shiqing’s stories are drawn primarily from the personal. Clothing becomes a starting point for both concealing and expressing the body, a second skin that provides visual clues to the invented stories. Planar and drawn elements within the clothing distort the three-dimensional illusion of the figure and elongated limbs further exaggerate the distortions of space.
Prix Elysée 2023
Image: Debi Cornwall, Smoke Bomb, 2018, from the series Necessary Fictions © Debi Cornwall
PHOTOPGRAPHY
Debi Cornwall
Prix Elysée
American photgrapher Debi Cornwall was awarded the Prix Elysée 2023 for her project Crisis Actors: Performing Citizenship, which questions the staging and performance of reality. She started this inquiry in Necessary Fictions by photographing military wargames. She is now casting a wider net, making photographs more elliptically related to her topic. In museums, exhibitions, trade fairs, non-military training sites, and everyday life, she will make photographs designed to invite inquiry: how are fictions deployed, commodified, and embraced, as noise that distracts us from the unforgiving onslaught of war, climate apocalypse, and ever-increasing inequality across the globe? What is this compulsion to package, restage, reframe, reenact, and perform our histories and current realities? What are we doing ourselves? Have we lost the signal admist the noise?
Grand Prix artistique de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca 2023
Image: Je vais par là, Hélène Delprat — 250 x 200 cm © ADAGP, Paris, 2023
ART
Hélène Delprat
Grand Prix artistique de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca
Hélène Delprat was awarded the Grand Prix artistique de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca 2023, on the proposal of the painting section of the Académie des beaux-arts. Hélène Delprat is an interdisciplinary artist whose oeuvre encompasses drawing, photography, collages, performance, video, sculpture, installation and staging. Inspired by literature, cinema, history, her work reveals questions of memory and identity. After training at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and a two-year stay at the Villa Médicis, Hélène Delprat took center stage on the international artistic scene in the 90s and 2000s. But suddenly, she left the galerie Maeght and decided not to show her work anymore while continuing her practice. After fifteen years, she entered the galerie Christophe Gaillard.
About the Grand Prix artistique de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca
Ithra Art Prize 2023
Image: Adel Abidin, "Politically Correct", 2018, sculptures en acier inoxydable enduit, 250 x 325 cm. Édition de 3. © Courtesy de l'artiste et Galerie Tanit.
ART
Adel Abidin
Ithra Art Prize
Adel Abidin, an Iraqi-Finnish artist based in Helsinki, was awarded the 5th edition of the Ithra Art Prize for his work titled "ON عن". The work explores the deep connection between history, memory and identity through the meticulous study of the Zanj Rebellion of 869 AD in southern Iraq, particularly in the city of Basra, where the artist has found a captivating example that illustrates these themes. As Adel Abidin delves into the intangible aspects of history, he faces the challenge of the scarcity of reliable archival sources. "This challenge is especially evident in the context of Arab history, where much remains shrouded in ambiguity, allowing for a broad range of interpretations and augmentations.", said the artist.
Prix Fisheye de la création visuelle
Image: From the series toujours diane. © Juliette Alhmah
PHOTOGRAPHY
Juliette Alhmah
Prix Fisheye de la création visuelle
Juliette Alhmah was awarded the Prix Fisheye de la création visuelle for her series toujours diane. Crossing archive images from the collection of the Observatoire de Paris and her own collection of film photos, Juliette Alhmah imagines, through toujours diane, a dreamlike visual tale taking place in a world where the sun no longer sets. Accompanied by a poetic text deprived of punctuation, the series weaves a non-linear narrative where light becomes the protagonist, as sumptuous as it is ruthless.
