Fourth Plinth Commissions
Image: Tschabalala Self's submission for the Fourth Plinth Commission, Lady in Blue (2024). Courtesy the artist and The Fourth Plinth Commission. Photo: James O Jenkins.
ART
Tschabalala Self
2026 Fourth Plinth Commission
Tschabalala Self, who was born in Harlem and is now based in the Hudson Valley, will present Lady in Blue on the plinth in 2026, one of the world's most popular public art commissions. Lady in Blue pays homage to a young, metropolitan woman of colour inspired by a desire to bring a contemporary 'everywoman' to Trafalgar Square. Made of bronze, the work will be patinated with Lapis Lazuli blue, a rare and refined pigment that has been used since antiquity. The work implicitly critiques the 19th century sculptures of once powerful men that feature on Trafalgar Square's other three plinths: King George IV, General Sir Charles James Napier and Major-General Sir Henry Havelock.
Image: Andra Ursuţa's submission for the Fourth Plinth Commission, Untitled (2024). Courtesy the artist and The Fourth Plinth Commission. Photo: James O Jenkins.
ART
Andra Ursuţa
2028 Fourth Plinth Commission
In 2028, Romanian-born artist Andra Ursuţa, who has lived in New York City since 1999, will show Untitled, a kind of anti-monument that sees the artist present a hollow, life-sized person on a horse covered in a shroud and cast in a slime-green resin. The sculpture embodies multiple histories of public sculpture and commemoration at a time when there is increasing debate about the use of public space. The other artists shortlisted for the prize were Chila Burman, Thomas J Price, Veronica Ryan, Gabriel Chaile and Ruth Ewan.
About the Fourth Plinth Commissions
Prix de dessin Fondation d’art contemporain Daniel & Florence Guerlain 2024
Image: Amir Nave, La comédie humaine, 2019. Collage and pencil on paper, 24 x 15.5 cm. Courtesy IN SITU – Fabienne Leclerc. Photo credit Aurélien Mole. Collection Florence et Daniel Guerlain
ART
Amir Nave
Prix de dessin Fondation d’art contemporain Daniel & Florence Guerlain
Amir Nave is the winner of the Prix de dessin de la Fondation d’art contemporain Daniel & Florence Guerlain 2024. Amir Nave works obsessively, spiritually, even almost mystically, on the human being, seen in an infinite temporality. The artist endlessly wonders who we are and where we are going. By following the movements of Amir Nave's figures, or 'creatures', the viewer embraces a part of human passions. Initially interested in landscapes or insects, looking for parallels between our species and theirs, the shapes then evolved into 'creatures', calling on the most buried pasts as much as possible futures. Sometimes drawn by a body, a head or an entity, they live and activate.
About the Prix de dessin Fondation d’art contemporain Daniel & Florence Guerlain
Prix Roger Pic 2024
Image: Sueurs et tremblements © Corentin Fohlen / Divergence
PHOTOGRAPHY
Corentin Fohlen
Prix Roger Pic
French photographer Corentin Fohlen is the winner of the Prix Roger Pic 2024 for his series, Sueurs et tremblements (Sweats and tremors), about daily life in Haiti, a country in constant struggle. Since 2010, Corentin Fohlen has been working on a long-term project on Haiti, disregarding the miserabilist clichés often attached to the Caribbean state to reveal its richness. By probing its slave-owning and colonial past, as well as the influence exerted by other countries, he sheds light on the resilience of a people.
Prix Drawing Now 2024
Image: Tatiana Wolska, Implosion, 2023. Coloured pencil on paper, 150 x 150 cm.
ART
Tatiana Wolska
Prix Drawing Now
Tatiana Wolska represented by Irène Laub gallery is the winner of the Prix Drawing Now 2024. On the verge of abstraction, flirting with the invisible and the intimate, Tatiana Wolska's multidisciplinary practice is characterised by the organic growth and proliferation of forms. Her drawings and sculptures, intimately linked, bear witness to her research into the sinuosity of curves, the emergence of organic elements and the hybridisation of objects. Plastic bottles, discarded nails and recycled wood become the foundations of mechanisms of propagation and amplification. Her drawings always evoke the living in a plural way (plants, muscles, organs, hair or micro-organisms) and place the question of the body at the centre of her preoccupations.
Queen Sonja Print Awards
Image: Anselm Kiefer, Hortus Conclusus, 2007-2014. Collage of woodcuts on canvas with acrylic and shellac, 380 × 255 cm. Private Collection © Anselm Kiefer and Charles Duprat
ART
Anselm Kiefer
Lifetime Achievement Award
German-born artist Anselm Kiefer has been awarded the Queen Sonja Lifetime Achievement Award for printmaking. Known for his monumental textured canvases incorporating industrial found objects and organic materials, the award recognises the artist's half-century of working with woodcuts, a lesser known aspect of his practice. Anselm Kiefer has used the medium to focus on German history and myth. He has engaged both with the traditional German form of woodcut, with roots in the earliest printed books, and the work of Old Master artists, reinterpreting them on a large scale.
About the Queen Sonja Print Awards
Prix Recanati-Kaplan 2024
Image: Dorothée-Myriam Kellou, "A Mansourah, tu nous as séparés", film still, 2019, documentary, 1hr 11min. Les films du Bilboquet. © Les films du Bilboquet
ART
Dorothée-Myriam Kellou
Prix Recanati-Kaplan
Dorothée-Myriam Kellou is the winner of the Prix Recanati-Kaplan 2024, which rewards a cultural figure from the Arab world. Dorothée-Myriam Kellou is an author, journalist and film-maker. Her project explores the practices and traditions of progressive and feminist forms of Islam. Her research, already begun in Algeria and France, has led her into dialogue with academics, spiritual guides and activists who enrich contemporary beliefs and approaches to Islam in France and the Arab region today. With the support of the Villa Albertine, she will continue her research in the United States within the Muslim community, documenting progressive practices that have deep roots in Muslim history.
