- Yael Bartana, ‘Wall and Tower’, 2009
The Artes Mundi Prize, the UK’s biggest single award for visual art, opened its exhibition of shortlisted artists today in Wales’ National Museum Cardiff. Now in its fourth edition, the biannual prize, which will be announced in May, gives £40,000 to an artist from outside the UK who ‘stimulates thinking about the human condition and humanity’.
A broad remit, you might imagine. However this year, the two selectors, Levent Çalikoglu and Viktor Misiano, chose eight artists from around 500 nominations, all of whom make work in a fairly narrow vein of socio-political documentary. Of these, Adrian Paci and Yael Bartana are, in the UK at least, probably the most well known, and represent two poles within this spectrum of approaches: Paci, with his lyrical brand of realism, summons haunting images that invoke the political through personal perspectives, while Bartana instigates often absurd, darkly humourous and even satirical events that ask big questions in bold, broad-brush terms. Both of them rely on film as their primary medium, and neither of them deserves to take away the grand prize.
- Kasmalieva + Djumaliev, ‘The New Silk Road: Algorithm of Survival and Hope, Racing’ (2007)
Film, video and photography – the default media of documentary – pervaded the exhibition. In some cases, as with Kyrgyzstani artist duo Gulnara Kasmalieva and Muratbek Djumaliev, the artist’s treatment of their subject matter doesn’t seem to extend far beyond National Geographic-style photographs of remarkable locations. Elsewhere, as with the videos of Ergin Çavusoglu or Chen Chieh-jen, elegantly composed but lengthy shots have a tendency to border on the ponderous.
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