Introduction to the 2019 Award Winners
First Prize Nadim Samman
Title: Oh You Pretty Things
Exhibition: JONNY NIESCHE: Throb

Nadim Samman is a curator and art historian based in Berlin. He read Philosophy at University College London before receiving his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art. He co-founded the 1st Antarctic Biennale (2017) and the Antarctic Pavilion (Venice, 2015-). In 2016 he curated the 5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, and in 2012 the 4th Marrakech Biennale (with Carson Chan). Other significant projects include Treasure of Lima: A Buried Exhibition (a unique site-specific exhibition on the remote Pacific island of Isla del Coco) and Rare Earth (at Thyssen- Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna).

 
 
Joint Second Prize Li Suchao
Title: Summoning the Souls of Gwangju — The Former Gwangju Armed Forces Hospital as Art Site
Exhibition: “Imagined Borders” — the ‘GB Commission’
Li Suchao, graduated from Christie’s Education London, University of Glasgow with a Master’s degree in History of Art, currently lives and works in Shanghai. She is an independent art writer, critic and translator, and has published a large number of critical reviews, artists’ profiles, interviews and essays in different art publications or platforms, such as Leap, ArtCo China, artforum.com.cn, Arthub Asia, etc. Meanwhile, she works as a translator for various art institutions and events. Her writings concern a wide range of subjects of contemporary art, especially the relationships between art and social politics, art and collective and individual experiences.  
 
 
Joint Second Prize Pu Yingwei
Title: Empire’s Legacy On “Pacing: A Journey of 70 years” and its silences
Exhibition: Pacing: A Journey of 70 years
Pu Yingwei, 1989 Born in Taiyuan, China. Lives and works in Lyon and Beijing, received his BFA from Sichuan Fine art Institute, DNSEP (MFA with Félicitation du jury) from École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon. Pu Yingwei bases his work upon his personal investigation of realities, as he believes that the experience and memory of individuals are the cordial justification of the world’s existence. The artist is revisiting and parodying political and historical text in a personal way through his practice of various forms, including exhibition, writing, publishing and lecturing, and working in his writing of a nonfictional autobiography the narratives that involve such broad topics as race, country, language and colonization. Also, Pu Yingwei views the nomadic life he’s lived in China and the West and the tide of globalization as a type of contemporary exile, and tries to describe in his works the intertextuality and mutual clarification between China’s domestic situations and other cultural contexts. In 2016, after “post-truth” became the word of the year, Pu Yingwei began his fictional writing, in the belief that first-language writing and translating are the identity construction and contextual production as one among the “others”. And such production is ushering in a new possible identity that is rid of any established ideologies. 
 
 
Joint Second Prize Tom Trevor
Title: Cook’s New Clothes, Cook’s New Clothes
Exhibition: Royal William Yard
Tom Trevor is a curator and writer based in the UK. He is Artistic Director of The Atlantic Project. He was previously Guest Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015-16), Artistic Director of the 4th Dojima River Biennale, Osaka (2014-15), curatorial consultant to the 1st ARoS Triennale in Aarhus, Denmark (2014-15), Guest Curator at the Devi Art Foundation, Delhi (2013- 14) and Director of Arnolfini in Bristol, UK (2005-13). As a curator of experimental emerging practice, Trevor has been responsible for numerous early career shows, as well as first UK exhibitions by artists such as Maria Thereza Alves, Cosima von Bonin, Matti Braun, Tania Bruguera, Meschac Gaba, Shilpa Gupta, Doris Salcedo, Joelle Tuerlinckx, Lois Weinberger and Haegue Yang, amongst others. As a writer he has produced or contributed to over 40 publications and journals. His most recent texts were for the 2018 Bruges Triennale catalogue, Liquid City, for the publication accompanying the launch of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town (2017), Africa Modern, and for the documenta 14: Daybook (2017).
 
 
6
Huang Gemian
Title: Sounding Out the Idols: W.J.T. Mitchell’s Love of Pictures
Exhibition: Metapictures
Lin Chengxiang
Title: The Dilemma of the Avant-garde and its Display Notes from visiting the exhibition “The Challenging Souls: Yves Klein, Lee Ufan, Ding Yi”
Exhibition:The Challenging Souls: Yves Klein, Lee Ufan, Ding Yi
Li Zhuowei
Title: The Post-Human Era: Has technology taken control of how humans behave and the logic of their thought? — Reflections on Doug Aitken’s exhibition
Exhibition:Doug Aitken’s exhibition
Jiang Wei
Title: The Perception of Concept: Francis Alÿs’ Poetic Politics
Exhibition:Francis Alÿs’ Solo Exhibition: La dépense
Shi Yue
Title: A Most “Un-Chinese” China Pavilion
Exhibition:China Pavilion “Re-Rui” in Venice Art Biennale
Tao Wenting
Title: Using Zheng Guogu’s Work to Examine Rigid Impressions in Curating Chinese Art
Exhibition:Zheng Guogu: “Photoworks 1993-2016: Even a Click of the Shutter is Necessary”
Yu Nianping
Title: From Artaud to “Woman as Protagonist” — Nancy Spero’s “Paper Mirror”
Exhibition:Nancy Spero, Paper Mirror
Yang Yini
Title: A Certain Structure
Exhibition: Su-mei Tse: Nested
 
 
6
Andrew O’Neil Hibbard
Title: 《Untitled, 1989/2019》
Exhibition:Untitled, 1989/2019
Evelyn Char
Title: 《Heterochronicity as écriture féminine: Problematising the Historical Traumas of Taiwan and Indonesia》
Exhibition:Letter - Callus - Post-War
Godfre Leung
Title: 《A Matter of Perpsective: Jinny Yu at Galerie Art Mûr》
Exhibition:Jinny Yu: why does its lock fit my key?
JJ Charlesworth
Title: 《Hiding In Plain Sight》
Exhibition:Francis Bacon: Coupling
Lizzie Homersham
Title: 《Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974–1995》
Exhibition:Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974–1995
Louis Shankar
Title: 《Trans/position》
Exhibition:Kiss My Genders
Patrick Reed
Title: 《Navigating the Ruby Con: Force Majeure and Sterling Ruby’s Damnation》
Exhibition:Damnation
Rahel Aima
Title: 《Firing Blanks: Hito Steyerl and the Voiding of Research Art》
Exhibition:Hito Steyerl: Drill
 
© International Awards For Art Criticism. All Rights Reserved.