On 12 January 2023, The winners of the Eighth Edition of International Awards for Art Criticism have just been announced. The First Prize has been awarded to Katherine C.M. Adams from New York, who wins a cash award of 10,000 Euros and a short residency in Shanghai. The three Joint Second Prizes have been awarded to, Pang Zheng from Shanghai, Andy Stooke from London and Zhong Shanyu from Beijing, who will each receive 3,500 euros.
The 8th edition of the IAAC
attracted 364 submissions. 188 were written in English and 176 in Chinese, indicating
a 45% growth in the number of contributions over the IAAC 7.
Submissions for the IAAC 8
competition came from candidates living in 52 countries on five continents,
Among the English-language candidates, the United Kingdom, the United States
and Germany accounted for over 50% of all entries, with the UK alone accounting
for 32% of the total. The emerging new forces came from Tunisia, Lebanon,
Ukraine, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Nigeria, Iran and Ukraine, among others.
The candidates in China came
from 20 different provinces，Overall, more than 50% were
based in Shanghai, Beijing and Zhejiang, followed by Sichuan, Guangdong, and
Hubei provinces.
Candidates for the IAAC 8 competition reviewed
exhibitions in different parts of the world or on-line between 1 January 2021
and 31 August 2022. Their critical focus was on art institutions, museums and
fairs, as well as individual and long-term projects, and online exhibitions.
This year’s jury was
composed of five judges: Iara Boubnova，curator of contemporary art projects and Director
of The National Gallery of Bulgaria, in Sofia; Hou Hanru, international curator
and art critic, living in Rome, Paris and San Francisco；Emily
LaBarge, Canadian-born writer living in London； Jacques Leenhardt, Director
of Studies at the School of Advanced Studies in Sociology in Paris and Honorary
President of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA); Lu Jiande,
Director of the Centre for Comparative Literature and Transcultural Studies at
Xiamen University.
After two days’ critical scrutiny of forty shortlisted submissions – all of them, anonymised - the jury decided on four winners:
First prize-winner（English
Review)：Katherine Adams
Joint second prize-winner (English review)：Andy Stooke
Joint second prize-winner (Chinese review)：Pang Zheng
Joint second prize winner (Chinese review)：Zhong Shanyu
Henry Meyric Hughes, Chair of the International Awards for Art Criticism (IAAC) said:
“The full-time professional art critic is a vanishing species, but writing about art, or becoming critically engaged with it from a variety of angles seems to be enjoying a boom […] What seems to be clear is the lack of space for critical reflection outside the purely promotional objectives of the majority of writers。
The popularity of the International Awards for Art Criticism seems to reflect not only the growing size of the audiences for contemporary art everywhere, but a widespread perception that there is a real need for critical reflection about the deeper meaning of art and its place in public discourse.
Professor Sun Xiangchen, Dean of the School of Philosophy at Fudan University, and his colleague, Professor Shen Yubing, as Chair of the brand-new Department of the Philosophy of Art within that School, have proved to be the most open-minded and understanding partners we could have wished for! We are discussing numerous proposals for the further development of the Awards in the course of 2023.”Prof. Sun Xiangchen, Dean of the School of Philosophy at Fudan University said: “It’s our first time to join the Organising Committee of IAAC, at the Philosophy School at Fudan University We feel grateful to see the exceptional and extremely diverse submissions from all over the world, and are conscious of the social issues and philosophical thinking reflected in the art exhibitions that the contestants reviewed. I want to congratulate all the winners and participants for their contribution to the world of art criticism and look forward to meeting many of them again. ”
20 reviews from the final selection, including the four Award-Winning ones, will be published in Chinese and English in IAAC Exhibition Reviews Annual 8, in summer 2023.
The Eighth International Awards for Art Criticism were organised by The International Awards for Art Criticism（IAAC）Ltd., sponsored by the School of Philosophy at Fudan University, co-organised by the Royal College of Art (RCA) London and Edinburgh College of Art (ECA), the University of Edinburgh, in association with the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).
The Organising Committee of the International Awards for Art Criticism aims to support independent critical coverage of contemporary art, away from the immediate pressures of the market, media and private patronage. The Awards are to stimulate good writing, critical thinking and dialogue and research in China, the UK and wider afield.
Introduction of the 2022
Prize Winners
First Prize
Katherine C.M. Adams
Title： Of Worlds and Women: 'No Master Territories'
Exhibition： No Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
Katherine Adams is a
curator, writer, and researcher based in New York. She is currently a
graduate student at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Her art
writing and criticism has appeared in art-agenda (e-flux); FLAT
Journal (UCLA); Triple Ampersand and Dance Art Journal, among
others. In the Summer of 2022, she was a Curatorial Fellow at the KW Institute
for Contemporary Art (Germany). She has curated various independent projects
including the 2021 exhibition and programmes Countercapture at Miriam
Gallery (New York). Her current research focuses on media theory and on
performance in contemporary art. Her recent curatorial research and
independent projects have centred on the politics of visibility, the use of
operational images in contemporary art, and infrastructures of critical
practice. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from Yale University.
Second Prizes
Andy Stooke Joint Second Prize
Title： Not something immortal achieved by mortal hands
Exhibition： On Hannah Arendt: Eight Proposals for Exhibition
Andy Stooke is an artist, writer, researcher, educator and
illustrator based in London and Shanghai. Their activities include
location-specific walks, circumnavigating tidal islands in the UK and USA for
Project Anywhere, and collaboration with Wang Wenjing for ‘We Rachmaninov,’ a
hybrid performance on opposite sides of the globe, featured in ‘Impossible
Bands’ at Shanghai Power Station of Art. Their writing on arts and society is
available across diverse popular and academic platforms in print and online.
They previously led high school art departments in China and the UK and were
the founding director of Oliver Holt Gallery, Dorset, UK
Pang Zheng Joint Second Prize
Title：Moving from Testimony to Representation — Demand’s ‘Most Pregnant Moment’
Exhibition： Thomas Demand：The Stutter of History
Pang Zheng is an art writer and art promoter. She is the founder
of AMO. She currently lives and works in Shanghai. She received her B.Sc. from
Sichuan University in 2006 and her M.B.A. from Fudan University in 2020. She has
studied Western art history and Western aesthetics on her own. Since 2018, she
has devoted herself to working as an exhibition guide and has acted in that
capacity for nearly one hundred exhibitions, to date. She hopes to encourage more
people gradually to improve their aesthetic understanding through the
appreciation and analysis of works of art. In 2019, she curated the exhibition “China-U.S.
Contemporary Art Collective Exhibition: Decipher the Surface”.
Zhong Shanyu Joint Second Prize
Title：The Song of Low Technology
Exhibition：The
Breakdown Economy
Shanyu Zhong
writes, edits, interviews, and translates. Her practice oscillates between the
fields of literature and art. She received her undergraduate degree in Chinese
literature, and went on to study modern and contemporary art. She has done
archival research on Chinese avant-garde art from the 1990s to the early 2000s.
She is now editor of Ocula and is based in Beijing.
Selected Chinese
Language Entries, IAAC 8 (In Alphabetical Order)
Dao Yun
Title：Nobody is
here：The Fall of Maurizio Cattelan
Exhibition：Maurizio
Cattelan: Wish You Were Here
Jiang Feiran
Title：The Future
Passed by Here
Exhibition：We Will
Build A New World: A History of Soviet Design
Wang Wei
Title："Waves
and Echoes": Revisiting Chinese Artistic Practices in the 1980s
Exhibition：Waves
and Echoes: A Process of Re-contemporarization in Chinese Art Circa 1987
Revisited
Wu Yiran
Title：A Poetic
Narrative of Disorientation Among the Blurred Boundaries Between Time and Space
Exhibition： Le
grand atlas de la désorientation
Hio Lam Kylie Sio
Title：‘Land that
Tells of History, People who Tell stories: Past, present, future’
Exhibition： I am land that remembers
Zhang Meng
Title：Who Can Lead
a Good Life During ‘Isolation’?
Exhibition：‘Bye Bye
Disco’ 14 Days Livestream
Zhang Shichen
Title: Perspective
Exhibition： The Mirror[-scape] of Your Skin
Zong Qingyang
Title：The Fluid
Mechanics of Alternative Knowledge
Exhibition：River Pulses Border Flows
Selected English
Language Entries, IAAC 8 (In Alphabetical Order)
Christopher Hayes
Title：Touch Grass
Exhibition：Back to
Earth
Dennis Brzek
Title：Forensic
Architecture's Many Realisms: A Review in Two Fonts
Exhibition：Three
Doors
Dylan Huw
Title：Floating
Nowheres
Exhibition：The
Soul-Expanding Ocean #3: Dineo Seshee Bopape and #4: Diana Policarpo
Ekow Eshun
Title：Portmanteau
Biota
Exhibition：Hurvin
Anderson: Reverb
Federica Bueti
Title：‘Shooting
Down Babylon’: Art as Exorcism as Magical Terrorism as Practice of Refusal
Exhibition：The
Botanical Mind
Guy Marshall-Brown
Title：Tanoa
Sasraku’s Terratypes, Spike Island, Bristol
Exhibition：Terratypes
Irisz Mallon
Title：Presence is
attenuated: departure
Exhibition：TESTAMENT
Nan Xi
Title：Wo/men at Odds
Exhibition：No
Master Territories: Feminist Worldmaking and the Moving Image
Jury Members For the IAAC 8
Iara Boubnova
Director of The National
Gallery of Bulgaria; Founding Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art,
Sofia; author of over 200 publications about contemporary art in Bulgaria and
abroad; independent curator of over 25 individual and group exhibitions, incl.
co-curator of biennials and of Bulgarian participation in biennials in Istanbul
(1994), São Paulo, Cetinje, Montenegro (1997), St. Petersburg (1999), Venice
(1999), Ljubljana (Manifesta, 2000). Assistant Professor, New Bulgarian
University, Visual Arts and Communication Department, Sofia.
Hou Hanru
International curator and
critic, based in San Francisco, Paris and Rome. Director of MAXXI Museum of
20th Century Art, Rome. Curated numerous exhibitions, incl. ‘Cities on the
Move’ (1997-99) and co-curator of numerous biennials and of Chinese and French
participation in same, incl. Venice (3 times), Shanghai (2000), Gwangzu (2002),
Istanbul (2007), Lyon (2009), Guangzhou Triennial (2009), Auckland Triennial,
N.Z. (2013).
Emily LaBarge
Canadian writer and
reviewer, living in London; teaches at the Royal College of Art, where she runs
the Writing Programme’s annual critical reading seminars on non-fictional
prose, the essay form and modes of experimental interdisciplinary writing. Has
written for Bookforum,
The Guardian, Tate etc., Frieze, London Review of Books, Witte de With.
Jacques Leenhardt
Sociologist and
philosopher. Director of Studies, Ėcole des Hautes Ėtudes en Sciences Sociales,
Paris; Hon. President, International Association of Art Critics (AICA);
President of the Friends of Wifredo Lam; author of numerous articles and
reviews and founder of the series ‘Art and Nature’ (Ėditions Actes Sud).
Lu Jiande
doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 1990. He specialises in the studies and research of the Romantics, Anglo-American Modernism and Comparative Literature. After working for about twenty years at the Institute of Foreign Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) as one of its academic heads, he became the Director-General of the Institute of Literature, CASS, and Editor-in-Chief of Literature Review until his he retirement in 2017. His works include Interests behind Ideas: Essays in Cultural Politics (2006), Canvas over the Horizon：Essays without Theoretical Claims (2012) and Self in Perspective (2015). He is also the Editor of T. S. Eliot: Poems, Plays and Critical Essays (Chinese edition, in 5 volumes, 2012) and World Literature in the Process of Modernisation (in 2 volumes, 2015). In recent years, he has written extensively on the genesis of modern Chinese literature and its active interaction with world literature; also the cultural transformation that took place from 1894 to 1930.
Participating
Organisations:
School of Philosophy, Fudan University
The School of Philosophy at Fudan University,
located in Shanghai, was founded in 2006. Its predecessor was Philosophy
Department of Fudan University, established in 1956, which was one of the
earliest philosophy departments established in New China.
Founded in 2020, the Department of Philosophy of Art relies closelyg on the overall advantages of Fudan University and the School of Philosophy, the advantages of location, provided by the vigorous development of contemporary art in Shanghai, and the opportunities for exchange afforded by Shanghai, as an international metropolis. The Department is now building itself into a centre of academic and creative excellence in the fields of philosophy of art and art theory.
ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART (RCA)
The Royal College of Art started life in 1837 as the Government School
of Design, located in Somerset House in the Strand. To this day, the RCA
remains the world's most influential wholly postgraduate university institution
of art and design, offering MA, MPhil and PhD degrees in fine art, applied art,
design, communication and humanities. It is the most concentrated community of
young artists, designers and communicators to be found anywhere.
Proud of its extraordinary roster of former students and its past successes, the RCA is, however, very much focused on the future: advancing knowledge and exploring new fields of practice in art, design, architecture, fashion, communication, the humanities and the applied arts.
Edinburgh College of Art
Edinburgh College of Art (ECA) is one of
eleven Schools in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the
University of Edinburgh. Tracing its history back to 1760, it provides higher
education in art and design, architecture, history of art, and music disciplines
for over two thousand students, and is at the forefront of research and
research-led teaching in the creative arts, humanities, and creative
technologies.
International Association of Art Critics (AICA),Paris
The International Association of Art Critics (or AICA, as it is universally called after its French acronym) was founded in 1949-50 and is an official non-governmental partner of UNESCO. Its aim is to support art criticism in all its forms and to keep pace with its changing disciplines. Its principal objective is to serve contemporary creativity. [ …} regional sections, in addition to a small international ‘Open Section’. The Association’s overheads are entirely financed by the subscriptions of its individual members and patrons. The Association organises an Annual Congress, each time in a different part of the world and sponsors publications, prizes, symposia, webinars and related activities.