The Golden Lion for the best national contribution was awarded to British artist Sonia Boyce for her exhibition “Feeling Her Way” in the British Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale.
The Golden Lion for finest female artist given to American artist Simone Leigh, whose massive sculpture of a black woman kicks off the Arsenale’s main show. As a result, the jury bestowed the highest honors on two internationally renowned black artists.
Sonia Boyce, at the British pavilion, demonstrates the power of female singing by projecting the sounds of five black singers onto giant screens. According to the jury’s statement, Boyce makes a range of untold stories available through her partnership with other black artists.
Untold stories are told via song.
For decades, the artist and professor of black art and design has been a powerful voice in the fight for female artists’ respect and against racism. The prize, according to the British artist, is also a marker of the international black art movement. “We’ve arrived. We’re not leaving any time soon, “She told the German Press Agency after receiving the award in Venice on Saturday. “More fantastic things are going to happen.” There is a wealth of skill among African-American painters. “I can’t wait for others to make their voices heard.”
In the first chamber of the Arsenale exhibition, directed by Biennale director Cecilia Alemani, Simone Leigh’s meter-high black bronze sculpture “Brick House” sets the tone. It depicts the body of a black woman wearing a skirt that resembles an African mud home.
The sculpture was initially enthroned on the High Line in New York. Simone Leigh will also be performing in the US pavilion this year. From the outside, covered with bamboo fibers, it is also reminiscent of an African hut. With her sculptures in the Giardini, which are visible from afar in matt black and sometimes also glazed in blue and white, Leigh self-confidently addresses the role and awakening of the black community.
The most important prizes thus went to two great artists whose contributions to this Biennial stand out. However, in recent years it has mostly been the great Western art nations whose representatives have been honored. The jury at the Venice Biennale 2019 chose the American multimedia artist Arthur Jafa as the best artist in the central exhibition.
Additional special mention awards went to the country contributors of France and Uganda. France’s pavilion, curated by the two new directors of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath, will feature the French-Algerian artist Zineb Sedira.
Uganda is there for the first time
The prize for Uganda, which took part in the Venice Biennale for the first time this year, is a welcome surprise. The presentation in the rooms of a palazzo in San Marco deserves attention. On display are works by the artist Acaye Kerunen, who works with local craftsmen and who brings their techniques and handling of traditional, natural materials into new contexts. These are joined by the portraits of black people by Collin Sekajugo. Photographs of white people found on the Internet serve as the starting point for Sekajugo’s depictions.
The Lebanese Ali Cherri, born in 1976, was honored as the best young artist for his installation “Of Men and Gods and Mud” in the Arsenale. The selection was certainly not easy, there are many remarkable contributions by younger artists in this exhibition. But Cherri’s combination of film installation and sculpture opens up new perspectives on the consequences of dam construction.
The Düsseldorf artist Katharina Fritsch and the Chilean artist Cecilia Vicuña also received a Golden Lion for their life’s work on Saturday.
In addition to the President of the Jury Adrienne Edwards from the USA, the five-strong jury included the curator and forthcoming new director of the Berlin House of World Cultures Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung and the art historian Susanne Pfeffer, director of the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt. (rieg/dpa)