The UK’s leading biennial exhibition and international contemporary art prize, Artes Mundi 10 with has announced the shortlist of seven international contemporary visual artists and five nationwide venue partners for its 10th anniversary edition.
As an important arbiter of cultural exchange between the UK and international communities, Artes Mundi again brings together a major biennial exhibition of international contemporary art by some of the most relevant artistic voices engaging with urgent topics of our time.
The artists are: Rushdi Anwar (Born Kurdistan. Lives and works between Thailand and Australia); Carolina Caycedo (Born UK to Colombian parents. Lives and works in USA); Alia Farid (Born Kuwait. Lives and works between Kuwait City and Puerto Rico); Naomi Rincón Gallardo (Born USA. Lives and works in Mexico); Taloi Havani (Born Bougainville, Nakas/ Hakö tribe. Lives and works in Australia); Nguy?n Trinh Thi (Born and continues to live and work in Vietnam) and Mounira Al Solh (Born Lebanon. Lives and works in The Netherlands).
Work by each artist will feature in the biennial exhibition AM10 taking place from October 2023 to March 2024 with the winner of the prestigious £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize – the UK’s largest contemporary art prize – announced during the exhibition run. For the first time, AM10 will be presented nationally at multiple venues across Wales. The venue partners are MOSTYN, Llandudno; Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea; National Museum Cardiff; and Chapter, Cardiff.
Nigel Prince, Director of Artes Mundi commented:
“AM10 will prove a watershed moment for Artes Mundi. As we simultaneously celebrate the legacies of the past twenty years working with some of the most exceptional artistic voices of recent times, we look ahead with our nationwide partners to presenting work from this edition’s shortlist that will speak to the urgent issues of our times in the most immediate of ways.”
Past editions have seen Artes Mundi work with artists at crucial stages of their careers, often being their first introduction to UK audiences, with many now established figures on the world stage, including Dineo Seshee Bopape, Prabhakar Pachpute, Ragnar Kjartansson, Theaster Gates, John Akomfrah, Teresa Margolles, Xu Bing and Tania Bruguera.
Juan De Lara, Head of Arts, Bagri Foundation commented:
“We are incredibly excited to work with these seven artists to present their work at various museums and galleries across Wales. We pride ourselves on our socially responsible programme and giving voices of diverse backgrounds a platform to expand and develop their practice. This selection of artists and the timing of this Artes Mundi 10 Exhibition and Prize presents us with the opportunity to do something truly exceptional together.”
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About the artists
Rushdi Anwar is a visual artist, researcher, silent activist, community engager, and social equity seeker. Originally from Halabja, Kurdistan (Kurdistan-Iraq), his work often reflects on the socio-political issues of Kurdistan, Iraq, and The Middle East. He draws from personal experiences and memories, poetically reflecting on contemporary issues of displacement, identity, conflict, and trauma endured under colonial and ideological regimes. He has held solo and group exhibitions widely with upcoming exhibitions including: Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, (2023); 5th Biennale of Casablanca, Morocco; wHole, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Australia; Art in Conflict, Australian War Memorial, Shepparton Art Museum; The Big Anxiety Festival, project New Kinds of Archives: Trauma, Knowledge & Feeling, RMIT Gallery, Australia, (all 2022). He co-founded and co-coordinated the Australian Thai Artist Interchange, Melbourne (2012-2016), and currently works in the Faculty of Fine Arts, Chiang Mai University, Thailand.
Carolina Caycedo is a multidisciplinary artist known for her performances, videos,?artist’s books, sculptures, and installations that examine environmental and social issues. Her?work contributes to the construction of environmental historical memory as a fundamental element for non-repetition of violence against human and nonhuman entities. She was a 2021-22 inaugural U.S. Latinx Artist Fellow and a 2020-22 inaugural Borderlands Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands at Arizona State University (ASU) and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.
Alia Farid (b. 1985) is a filmmaker and sculptor whose practice centres on lesser-known histories often deliberately erased. She lives and works in Kuwait and Puerto Rico. She has had recent solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2022); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAMSTL), St. Louis (2022); Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2022); and Portikus, Frankfurt (2019). Recent and upcoming group shows include participation in the Whitney Biennial (2022), Lahore Biennale (2020), Yokohama Triennale (2020), Gwangju Biennale (2019), Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991-2001 at MoMA PS1 (2019, Sharjah Biennial (2019), and the Bienal de São Paulo (2016). She has forthcoming solo exhibitions at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto and Chisenhale Gallery in London, both in 2023.
Naomi Rincón Gallardo is a visual artist and researcher. From a decolonial-cuir perspective, her research-driven critical-mythical dreamlike world-makings address the creation of counter-worlds in neo-colonial settings. In her work she integrates her interests in theatre games, popular music, Mesoamerican cosmologies, speculative fiction, vernacular festivities and crafts, decolonial feminisms and queer of colour critique. She is currently a beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte, FONCA (2019-2022), Mexico. Recent solo and group shows and performative screenings include:59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (2022); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Una Trilogía de Cuevas (A Trilogy of Caves), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (2020); May your thunder break the sky, Kunstraum Innsbruck (2020); 11th Berlin Biennale, (2020); Heavy Blood, Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City (2019); Opossum Resilience, Parallel Oaxaca, (2019); Stone Telling, Kunstraum Niederösterreich Vienna (2019); En Cuatro Patas, Pacific Standard Time. LA, The Broad Museum, L.A., (2018); FEMSA Biennial. We have Never been Contemporary, Zacatecas (2018); The Formaldehyde Trip, Performance in Progress. SFMOMA, San Francisco (2017); Odarodle. An imaginary their_story of naturepeoples, 1535-2017, Schwules Museum, Berlin (2017), and Nicaragua Biennial (2016)
Taloi Havini is a multidisciplinary artist using a range of media including photography, audio –video, sculpture, immersive installation and print. Knowledge –production, inheritance, mapping, and representation in relation to her homeland in Bougainville are core themes across Havani’s work. Major commissions and exhibitions include TBA21–Academy & Schmidt Ocean Institute, Ocean Space, Venice; Artspace, Sydney; Dhaka Art Summit, Bangladesh; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Sharjah Biennial 13; 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, QAGOMA, Brisbane: The National, AGNSW, Sydney. Her work is held in public collections by Sharjah Art Foundation, Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW), National Gallery of Victoria, KADIST and Queensland Art Gallery (QAGOMA).
Nguy?n Trinh Thi is a Hanoi-based filmmaker and artist. Traversing boundaries between film and video art, installation and performance, her practice currently explores the power of sound and listening, and the multiple relations between image, sound, and space, with ongoing interests in history, memory, representation, ecology, and the unknown. Nguyen’s works have been shown at international festivals and exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennale of Contemporary Art (APT9) in Brisbane; Sydney Biennale (2018); Jeu de Paume, Paris; the Lyon Biennale (2015); Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (2014); and Singapore Biennale (2013). In 2022, her mixed-media installation, And They Die a Natural Death, is exhibited at documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany.
Mounira Al Solh is a visual artist embracing inter alia video and video installations, painting and drawing, embroidery, and performative gestures. Irony and self-reflectivity are central strategies for her work, which explores feminist issues, tracks patterns of micro-history, is socially engaged, and can be political and escapist all at once. In 2008, Al Solh started a NOA Magazine, a performative gesture co-edited with collaborators such as Fadi El Tofeili and Mona Abu Rayyan, and Jacques Aswad (NOA III). She has had solo exhibitions at Mathaf, Qatar (2018); Art Institute Chicago (2018); ALT, Istanbul (2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014); Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2013); Art in General, New York (2012); and Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2011). As well as group exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020), Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2020), Carré d’Art Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes (2018); documenta 14, Athens & Kassel (2017); 56th Venice Biennial (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Homeworks, Beirut (2013); House of Art, Munich (2010); and the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009).
