Anonymous Was a Woman Awards 2021
Image: Nanette Carter, Cantilevered #60, 2021, oil on Mylar, 6' x 5'5".
ART
Anonymous Was a Woman Award
For two decades, the New York–based organization Anonymous Was a Woman has recognized women-identifying artists over the age of 40. While AWAW typically recognizes 10 artists per year, donations from two anonymous supporters have enabled the organization to recognize four more artists annually for the next three years. This year awardees include Nanette Carter, a New York–based educator and mixed media artist known for her abstract paintings on sheaths of frosted Mylar; Anita Fields, a ceramic and textile artist of Osage heritage; Suzanne Jackson, a visual artist and poet, and director of the now-defunct Gallery 32 and performance artist, dancer, and activist Julie Tolentino, last year recipient of the Queer|Art’s annual award for Sustained Achievement.
About the Anonymous Was a Woman Awards
Sobey Art Award 2021
Image: Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Nannuppugut!, 2021.
Polar bear skin, wooden frame, elasticated rope and projected video. © MBAC
ART
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory
Sobey Art Award
Inuit performance artist Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory has been selected as the 2021 recipient of the Sobey Art Award, Canada’s top art award. She has received acclaim for her performance art, which centers around the traditional Inuit Greenlandic mask dance, known as uaajeerneq, and deals with concepts derived from feminism and Indigenous history. Issues surrounding land use and ownership play a key role in her art. A through-line of the artist’s genre-defying practice is to encourage Inuit to see themselves. She pursues this goal through collaboration with others, stating, "Because of the legacy of colonization, we, as Indigenous people, don’t own our stories unless we tell them ourselves. Tell your stories."
Queer|Art|Prize 2021
Image: Lola Flash, portrait of Esther Cooper Jackson, 2013, from the "salt" series.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Lola Flash
Sustained Achievement
Working at the forefront of genderqueer visual politics for more than three decades, photographer Lola Flash’s work challenges stereotypes and gender, sexual, and racial preconceptions. An active member of ACT UP during the time of the AIDS epidemic in New York City, Flash was notably featured in the 1989 "Kissing Doesn’t Kill" poster. Their art and activism are profoundly connected, fueling a life-long commitment to visibility and preserving the legacy of LGBTQIA+ and communities of color worldwide. Lola Flash has work included in important collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, MoMA, the Whitney, and the Brooklyn Museum. They are currently a proud member of the Kamoinge Collective.
Prix de Gravure Mario Avati 2021
Académie des beaux-arts
Image: Mireille Baltar, "Nom d'un chien", 2016, gravure rehaussée, 68 X 78 cm.
ART
Mireille Baltar and Siemen Dijkstra
Prix de Gravure Mario Avati
The Prix de Gravure Mario Avati 2021 was awarded to French artist Mireille Baltar and Dutch artist Siemen Dijkstra. An exhibition of the works of the two winning artists will be organized at the Académie des beaux-arts from May 13 to June 12, 2022.
Mireille Baltar, born in 1942, studied Fine Arts in Toulon and at the same time philosophy. Her meetings with Friedlaender and Jacques Frélaut in 1970 were decisive. Painter and drawer, she devotes herself mainly to engraving which she taught until 2013 at Paris Ateliers.
Siemen Dijkstra, born in 1968, produces meticulous color woodcuts. Passionate about nature, he has made the landscape of the Drenthe in the Netherlands, where he lives and works, his favorite subject.
About the Prix de Gravure Mario Avati - Académie des beaux-arts
CFDA Fashion Awards 2021
Image: Christopher John Rogers, Resort 2022, Womenswear.
FASHION
Christopher John Rogers
American Womenswear Designer of the Year
Christopher John Rogers debuted his label in 2016. Since then the designer has made serious strides in the fashion world, with his eye-catching patterns and brightly hued designs seen on the likes of Michelle Obama, Rihanna, Zendaya, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Vice President Kamala Harris. Christopher John Rogers, who was born in Baton Rouge, La., and is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design, was the 2019 winner of the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund. In 2020, he also received the CFDA’s Emerging Designer Award.
Image: Bode, Fall 2021, Menswear.
FASHION
Emily Bode Aujla
American Menswear Designer of the Year
Emily Bode Aujla created her eponymous brand, Bode, in 2016. Bode is a luxury menswear brand that expresses a sentimentality for the past through the study of personal narratives and historical techniques. Modern workwear silhouettes united with female-centric traditions of quilting, mending, and appliqué shape the collections. Each piece tells a story and is tailor-made. Emily Bode Aujla received the CFDA’s Emerging Designer Award in 2019.
"ad occhi chiusi…" Prize 2021
Artissima and Fondazione Merz
Image: Heba Y. Amin, The General’s Stork I, 2020, archival color print, 100 × 80.9 cm,
from the exhibition "When I see the future, I close my eyes" at The Mosaic Rooms, London.
ART
Heba Y. Amin and Dominique White
"ad occhi chiusi…" Prize
Heba Y. Amin and Dominique White are the winners of the first edition of the "ad occhi chiusi…" Prize, born from a collaboration between the Artissima fair and the Fondazione Merz.
Heba Y. Amin was born in Egypt in 1980. Based in Berlin, she engages with political themes and archival history, using mediums including film, photography, archival material, lecture performance and installation. Her artistic research addresses the convergence of politics, technology, and architecture, and takes a speculative, often satirical, approach to challenging narratives of conquest and control.
Dominique White lives and works in Marseille and London. The artist uses sea found materials to develop installations that combine nautical myths of the African diaspora, ideas of Afro-futurism or the trauma of escape and migration.
About the "ad occhi chiusi…" Prize - Artissima and Fondazione Merz
