Swedbank Art Award 2008
Location: 5th floor, Gallery of Contemporary Art
The Swedbank Art Award 2008 was granted to Latvian artist Miks Mitrēvics.
The works of five candidates from five countries will be exhibited: Taavi Piibemann (Estonia), Miks Mitrēvics (Latvia), Kristina Inciuraitė (Lithuania), Alexander Vaindorf (Sweden), and the duo Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina (Russia).
The laureate will be presented with a prize of 10 000 Euros. The winner will be announced at the opening ceremony of the exhibition, starting at 6 pm on the 4th of December 2008 at the Kumu Art Museum.
The winner of the Swedbank Art Award 2008 will be chosen by an international jury: Iris Müller-Westermann (Moderna Museet, Sweden), Maaretta Jaukkuri (Kunstnernes Hus, Norway), Norbert Weber (freelance curator, Germany), Jarosław Suchan (Muzeum Sztuki, Poland) and Sirje Helme (Kumu Art Museum, Estonia).
Throughout the years, the artist’s active functioning during the previous year has played an essential role in choosing the winner, along with the innovativeness and international accessibility of the artist’s work.
The Swedbank Art Award was founded in 2000, when Hansapank, in cooperation with the Centre for Contemporary Art in Estonia, first issued the Hansapank Art Award. The first prize winner in 2000 was Marko Laimre, in 2001 the prize was awarded to Ene-Liis Semper, and in 2002 to Marko Mäetamm. In 2003 the award was extended to Latvian and Lithuanian artists and the same year the winner of the award was the Lithuanian artist Artūras Raila. The winners of the award were Gints Gabrins from Latvia in 2004, Mark Raidpere from Estonia in 2005 and Valdas Ozarinskas from Lithuania in 2006.
The nominees for 2008 are:
Miks Mitrēvics, Latvia
Miks Mitrēvics focuses on installation that is based on biographical material, which he treats in a broader context. Mitrēvics’ style, which seeks an aestheticized and elegant result while using the coarsest materials, deserves special attention. In Tallinn, the most well-known work by Miks, “Collection of Persons,” will be exhibited. The work unites installations with different topics, each of which focuses on a certain person. The installations generalise stories, placing them in a broader social context.
Kristina Inciuraitė, Lithuania
Inciuraitė works with different media and she is noted for expressing changes that have occurred in post-Soviet society. The competition includes Inciuraitė’s newest work, “Test” (2007–2008), which is a three-part installation that is comprised of a series of graphic prints, photographs, and videos. In the graphic series “The Oilblot Test” (2007), the silk-screens depict motifs used by psychologists in the Rorschach Inkblot test, which is used to analyze the patient’s personality and his/her emotional condition. The series of photographs “Veteran Women” (2007) represents veteran employees of the Mazeikiu oil processing plant – middle-aged socially vulnerable women. The video “Oil City” (2007–2008) is set in the industrial quarter of Mazeikiai, which has problems with the labor force brought in from Poland.
Igor Makarevich and Elena Elagina, Russia
Since the 1980s, Makarevich and Elagina have been engaged in creating the Russian version of art povera, and they are both members of the conceptual art group “Collective Actions.” Their work “The Russian Idea,” submitted for the art award, is a voluminous installation, with plenty of hidden meanings, that unites different art media and objects made of organic substances. The basis of the installation is opposition to the pseudo-documentalism prevalent in contemporary art. Their symbolic approach to the theme shares the view that, in the ideologically active contemporary reality, art must maintain its autonomy and fight against the marginalisation of contemporary artists.
Alexander Vaindorf, Sweden
Vaindorf is mainly a video and installation artist. The work “Detour,” submitted to the exhibition, focuses on middle-aged women in Ukraine and in Russia who work illegally in Rome, where they have formed Russian and Ukrainian ethnic groups. The film depicts the fate of immigrant workers, focusing mostly on women who spend time together every Sunday. The rest of the week they work hard in Italian households, where they have been hired as charwomen.
Taavi Piibemann, Estonia
Piibemann is a representative of the conceptual school of photography, which works with black-and-white photos and is analytically based. At the exhibition, Piibemann will exhibit a multi-part installation. The project discusses the issue of seeing and not seeing. It raises doubts about watching and involves the themes of fictitious and factual darkness. Piibemann’s project is introduced by a long passage lined with curtains, where the viewer must continuously struggle to see the image projected on the curtains, and push it away, but in fact the actual object in the blind spot of the work is the viewer. The passage is continued by a photo diptych finished in a new quality in 2004, and the photo series “References.”
