Munich/Berlin. From September 16, 2021 to
February 27, 2022 works of the nominees of the Preis der
Nationalgalerie 2021 Lamin Fofana, Calla
Henkel Max Pitegoff, Sandra Mujinga,
and Sung Tieu will be on display for a joint
exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin.
The BMW Group Cultural Engagement which celebrates its 50th
anniversary this year, already supports the Preis der Nationalgalerie
for 15 years now.
Deploying installation, photography, sculpture, sound, and other
media, the shortlist exhibition address topics such as displacement
and migration, belonging and alienation, shifting logics of public and
private space, and the potential of sound and music to act as social
forces. On display of the exhibition are both, already existing works
as well as new productions of the artists.
On the evening of October 7, 2021, an international
jury will announce the winner of the Preis der Nationalgalerie 2021.
The museum prize will be awarded already for the eleventh time by the
Nationalgalerie Berlin. It consists of a solo exhibition at Hamburger
Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin in the course of 2022 and an
accompanying publication.
The jury consists of:
Emre Baykal, Chief Curator, Arter, Istanbul
Sven Beckstette, Curator, Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum
für Gegenwart – Berlin
Gabriele Knapstein, Head of Hamburger Bahnhof –
Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin
Emma Lavigne, President, Palais de Tokyo, Paris
Yesomi Umolu, Director of Curatorial Affairs and
Public Practice, Serpentine, London
The Preis der Nationalgalerie is made possible by the Freunde der
Nationalgalerie since the year 2000 and supported by BMW as exclusive
partner for 15 years now. The award focuses on young important
positions of today. Eligible are artists of all nationalities who at
the time of their nomination live and work in Germany and are under
the age of 40. Previous awardees amongst others were Monica Bonvicini
(2005), Cyprien Gaillard (2011), Anne Imhof (2015), Agnieszka Polska
(2017), and Pauline Curnier Jardin (2019).
For further information and image material, please visit www.preisdernationalgalerie.de
or www.smb.museum
For further questions please contact:
Prof. Dr
Thomas Girst
BMW Group Corporate and Governmental Affairs
Head of Cultural Engagement
Telephone: +49 89 382 247
53
Email: Thomas.Girst@bmwgroup.com
www.press.bmwgroup.com
Email:
presse@bmw.de
Fiona Geuss
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Preußischer
Kulturbesitz
Press Officer Nationalgalerie
Telephone: +49 30
3978 34 17
Email: presse@smb.spk-berlin.de
About the artists and their works on display at the shortlist
exhibition
Preis der Nationalgalerie 2021
Lamin Fofana (lives in Berlin and New
York)
Lamin Fofana explores questions of movement, migration,
alienation and belonging through his electronic music and in
installations. He synthesizes original composition, field recordings
and archival material to create sounds which place historical and
contemporary Black critical thought in a dialogue with the reality of
the world around us, and which open up new spaces for reflection
beyond this reality. For Preis der Nationalgalerie 2021, Fofana is
presenting the sound installations “BLUES” (2020) and “Ballad Air
Fire” (2021), in which he incorporates light and scents as well
as videos and photography by his long-term collaborators Nicolas
Premier and Jim C. Nedd. In the installations, Fofana engages with key
texts dealing with the experiences of African people living in the
West–including works by Sylvia Wynter, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Amiri
Baraka–to create a multisensory space that fosters an active and
collective practice of listening.
Calla Henkel Max Pitegoff (born 1988 in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA / 1987 in Buffalo, New York, USA; both
live in Berlin)
Over the past ten years, Calla Henkel and Max
Pitegoff have developed a practice rooted in documentary photography
which has captured the socio-urban development of Berlin from their
perspective within the city’s artistic community. Their spaces Times
Bar, New Theater and, currently, their TV Bar have shaped the Berlin
art scene of recent years. In the photographic series “Exteriors”
(2021) and “Collective Image (Klärwerk Ruhleben)” (2021), the duo
examines utopian projections and underlying realities in order to
offer a view on urban development in Berlin and the unseen, peripheral
moments of city living. In addition, they are presenting a trailer for
“Paradise” (since 2020), an ongoing television series filmed at TV
Bar. The first two episodes of the series will be shown parallel to
the exhibition in bars and independent spaces around the city,
including Bierhaus Urban, Hopscotch Reading Room, Eschschloraque, and
Restaurant im Hamburger Bahnhof.
Sandra Mujinga (born 1989 in Goma, Democratic
Republic of the Congo; lives in Berlin and Oslo)
In her work,
Sandra Mujinga negotiates economies of visibility and invisibility,
and questions around identity, self-representation and surveillance.
The notion of camouflage and invisibility as a survival strategy plays
a crucial role in her observations of existing socio-political
structures and power dynamics. She navigates both physical and digital
spaces to create images and spatial configuration for speculative
worlds which look beyond an anthropocentric paradigm. In the
exhibition, Mujinga is presenting two new sculptural ensembles:
“Reworlding Remains” (2021) and “Sentinels of Change” (2021). Engaging
with principles of Afrofuturism and science fiction, and theories of
the posthuman, Mujinga deploys the strategy of worldbuilding in the
creation of fantastic figures and a schematic representation of a
dinosaur’s body bathed in green light.
Sung Tieus (born 1987 in Hau Duong, Vietnam; lives in
Berlin)
Life in the diaspora and its psychological consequences,
as well as the legacy of the Cold War and its lasting effects on
global capitalism are all recurring themes in the work of Sung Tieu
(born 1987 in Hai Duong, Vietnam, lives in Berlin). In her works she
often interlinks fact and fiction, historical and biographical events,
and a diverse array of lived social experiences. The installation
“Song for VEB Stern-Radio Berlin” (2021) draws on her interest in the
history of Vietnamese contract workers in the GDR. By incorporating
radios manufactured by contract workers in Berlin, Tieu’s installation
alludes directly to the city and its Vietnamese community. The radios
activate the space acoustically and create a dense weave of
readymades, texts and sound that give occasion to think about the
relationship between work and life, and between individuals and systems.