Eligibility to Apply

The awards are open to all, there is no age limit and we welcome entries from individuals representing a wide range of backgrounds from anywhere in the world, writing in Chinese or English.

Entrants are required to submit a piece of critical writing about a contemporary art exhibition held anywhere in the world, between 1st September 2022 and 31st August 2023. The start and end dates of the exhibition may fall outside these dates, but the exhibition must have been open to the public at some stage during this period.

Application Procedure

All candidates are invited to log in to the official IAAC website, enter the relevant details and upload their review and any accompanying images. They may then return to the site to add or alter information at any time up to the deadline for submissions

Opening date for entries: 26 June 2023;
Closing date for entries: 20 September 2023

Notice

Submissions may be no longer than 1,500 English words or 2,500 Chinese characters in length. Variations in length of more than 10 % either way are likely to be rejected.

Submissions may be accompanied by a maximum of three images of the relevant exhibition, which are cleared for publication (please give full captions and acknowledgments!). There is, however, no requirement to submit images of the relevant exhibition. Only provide images, if you consider them to be necessary to your discussion of the exhibition in question.

Submissions should be sent electronically as a single PDF file no greater than 4MB-i.e an 'optimised' pdf. (The entire email should not be more than 5MB).

All entries will be anonymised for the judges, but please include personal information and brief exhibition details in the body of the application form, for administrative purposes.

Publishing rights on all texts must be assigned to the organisers.

The objectivity of the selection process is underpinned, both by the recognised professionalism of the Chinese and English-speaking jury members and by the strict anonymity of the judging process.

All valid entries will initially be sorted and shortlisted by the organisers and academic partners in China and the UK, then translated into Chinese (for English entries) or English (for Chinese entries).

The final adjudication will be in English, at a meeting of the combined panel of Chinese and English-speaking judges towards middle of December in Shanghai, and announced to the media immediately afterwards.