The Principal 2009 Prince Claus Award of € 100,000 goes to Colombian architect Simón Vélez. The Awards Ceremony will take place on the 16th December 2009 at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam. In addition, ten other laureates will receive awards of € 25.000 each at ceremonies to be held during the first months of 2010 in the Dutch Embassies in the countries where they live in the first months of 2010. The Prince Claus Awards have been given every year since 1997 to artists, intellectuals and cultural organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
The relationship of Culture and Nature is a subject of powerful contemporary relevance and of special interest to the Prince Claus Fund. Through its 2009 Awards Programme, the Fund seeks to highlight and celebrate artists, cultural groups and organisations that demonstrate significant interactions between Culture and Nature, introduce new ideas and approaches to environmental issues, work with natural resources to stimulate sustainable forms of development, and reveal the impact of culture on the environment in innovative ways that help to build societies that nurture positive relations between Culture and Nature.
Read the paper Culture and Nature, ‘Hanging Gardens: relations between Culture and Nature’
Simón Vélez’s aesthetic and technical innovations in bamboo have enhanced it construction potential and challenged mainstream architectural trends. After completing his studies at Universidad de los Andes, Bogota, Vélez moved away from the predominant international stream to focus on indigenous architectural practices. He invented a new method to build foundations and roofs, which transformed one of the world’s oldest building materials, namely bamboo, into a modern resource that meets the strictest international construction regulations and can even outperform steel. Simón Vélez is honoured for his aesthetic use of natural materials for contemporary design, for transforming local traditional indigenous knowledge through innovation that renews and extends its relevance as a source of solutions for global problems, and most importantly he is honoured for highlighting the essential rapport between sustainable design practices and social development, and between culture and nature. Read more
Laureates working in the field of Visual Arts
Highly original sculptor, El Anatsui is a beacon in contemporary African art. Researching and experimenting with local symbolic vocabularies, forms, artisanal processes and materials, he has developed an open eclectic approach. Using an unusual range of natural materials and processed items, Anatsui’s artworks interrogate issues through the layers of meaning embodied in their substance and form. Professor of Sculpture and Head of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Anatsui is a staunch defender of artistic freedom and promoter of art’s role in local development. A generous mentor and an inspiring teacher, his lifelong dedication to intellectual exploration of political and environmental issues has influenced local social and cultural development not only through his artwork but also through his influence on generations of young artists. Read more
Doual’art is an independent, non-profit organisation that has revolutionised the art scene in Cameroon. Under the leadership of Marilyn Douala Bell and Didier Schaub, Espace Doual’art presents high quality exhibitions, artists’ talks, debates and conferences. Its workshops and residency programmes attract artists from across the region and abroad, providing opportunity to research, experiment and develop, as well as introductions to international curators. It is a key locus for regional diversity and an information hub for contemporary art in Central Africa.This first Prince Claus Award to Cameroon honours Doual’art for its clearly articulated vision encompassing aesthetic quality and social engagement, for its innovative efforts to raise awareness of citizens’ role in imagining and constructing their city, and for its inspirational impact on the visual arts and on social and cultural development in Central Africa. Read more
Conceptual artist Liang Shaoji creates unique meditations on nature and human existence. Graduating in textile studies at the Zhejiang Art Academy, Liang felt limited by the grid of warp and weft. Drawn to raw silk, he began to breed silkworms – symbols of generosity and endurance in Chinese culture – and incorporates them in artworks by setting them to spin their thread around objects. Resisting the rampant commercialisation of modern Chinese art, Liang explores aspects of life and human qualities that influence social and cultural development. His works have been exhibited at the Venice (1999), Istanbul (1999) and Shanghai (2000, 2006) biennales. Liang Shaoji is awarded for his evocative artworks that offer a meditative approach in which art becomes nature and nature becomes art, for his artistic integrity in working outside the mainstream, and for his insightful investigation of the ethics of the human condition and relationship with nature. Read more
Jivya Soma Mashe has transformed the ritual art of the Warli people into a relevant contemporary expression that elaborates their original vision on the rapport between nature and culture. His work has significantly impacted both on the social and cultural development of the Warli people and on the perceptions of Indian society. Traditionally, it was only women who painted a limited range of fertility images on internal mud walls during harvest and marriage ceremonies. Mashe was the first Warli man to paint images. Jivya Soma Mashe is honoured for his creative reinvention of an art vocabulary that was disappearing, for his vivid representation of the Warli vision of nature and culture in equilibrium, for highlighting the contemporary relevance of local forms of knowledge, and for his significant contribution to the culture and development of the tribal peoples. Read more
Laureates working in the field of Photography & Film
Sammy Baloji is a prodigiously talented young photographer whose work shines a powerful spotlight on contemporary Congolese reality. Having studied literature and human sciences at Lubumbashi University, he was drawn to photography and video as expressive mediums for representing the environment of Katanga, a locus for colonial and post-colonial exploitation of its wealth of minerals essential for Western technologies. Baloji creates videos that investigate the body, and, despite restrictions on photographing public sites, he produces images of the Congo’s urban architecture. His work is raising social consciousness and stimulating artistic development in the Katanga region. Sammy Baloji is awarded for his highly original inscription of the painful history of human and environmental exploitation into the present-day landscape, for bringing Congo’s current realities to an international platform, for his important contribution to the memory of the Congo providing a new reading of the present, and for his challenging demonstration that development can only be realised after duly taking into account the traumas of the past. Read more
Santu Mofokeng is a highly perceptive and significant photographer. From a brief stint as a teenage street photographer, jobs as darkroom assistant and newspaper photographer, to work with the Afrapix Collective documenting the anti-apartheid struggle, Mofokeng’s trajectory offered vital lessons about the power of representation. Increasingly frustrated with overt political photojournalism, he took a job with the African Studies Institute’s Oral History Project and began to photograph home life, street soccer and shebeens.
Mofokeng’s work is a significant contribution to understanding and research on human development in the South African context. Santu Mofokeng is honoured for the outstanding quality and content of his work, for his refiguration of the powers of photographic representation, for his acute insight into the cultural meanings in landscapes and the reciprocal relations of environment and development, and for his significant contribution to photography in Africa. Read more
Laureates working in the field of Collective Memories & Journalism
Writer and activist, Kanak Mani Dixit is a catalyst for cultural development that transcends national boundaries in South Asia. Educated in Nepal, India and the USA, he is the founding editor (1987 to the present) of Himal Southasian, a high quality, independent, monthly journal that offers informed critical commentary on social and cultural issues. With contributors, editorial board and subscribers – intellectuals, activists, lay readers and artists – drawn from Afghanistan, India and Burma to Tibet, Pakistan and the Maldives, it is a unique regional forum for the promotion of open, analytical thought and discussion. Alongside the journal, Dixit plays an influential role in a wide variety of cultural disciplines. He founded the Film South Asia (FSA), a documentary festival, which has become an important platform for local creativity, stimulating innovative local filmmaking on topics such as gender, child labour and water scarcity. This first Prince Claus Award to Nepal honours Kanak Mani Dixit for his outstanding contributions to public debate, for creating platforms that enable South Asians to connect, interact and network transcending national and cultural boundaries, and for his socially engaged, multi-disciplinary approach to creativity and development. Read more
The Institute for the History of Nicaragua and Central America (IHNCA) is renowned for its rigorous research and activities dedicated to providing communities with access to their own patrimony. Its resources include more than 50,000 books, extensive holdings of newspapers, maps, films, paintings, photographs, oral recordings, news-agency videos and collections of artefacts such as masks. Central to its activities is a long-term programme to recover the memory of Nicaragua’s diverse indigenous groups, affirming their past and providing insight into current issues. Led by dedicated Director Margarita Vannini, a team of professional staff carry out field research, make oral recordings, and rescue and conserve fragile documents. This first Prince Claus Award to Nicaragua honours IHNCA for its committed recuperation of local memory and history, for its engaged research that draws on the past to find solutions to present issues, and for strengthening links between Nicaraguans’ cultural identity and development. Read more
Cultural activist extraordinaire, Desiderio Navarro is esteemed as a thinker, writer, editor, translator and cultural organiser who has dedicated a lifetime to the stimulation and development of intellectual thought and analysis. For 37 years he has edited and produced one of the world’s outstanding journals, Criterios, which collects important critical essays on aesthetics and the theories of literature, arts and culture. Navarro translates from 15 languages to make their content accessible to Cuban and other Spanish-speaking populations. Unique in its pluralist approach and broad scope, Criterios has published more than 300 texts by 197 distinguished authors from 30 countries. Navarro writes sharp, timely and erudite essays that influence leaders in the arts. He is the editor of 18 anthologies and multi-author volumes, and recently produced a CD of “1001 texts” for students, distributed free to 100 institutions in Cuba. Desiderio Navarro is honoured for his passionate dedication to the diffusion of critical intellectual knowledge on cultural theories, for his insightful writing and analysis, and for his outstanding contributions to freedom of expression and cultural development in Cuba. Read more
Gaston Acurio is a master chef whose passion and innovation have elevated Peruvian cuisine, making it an exciting expression of the rich local culture. Abandoning legal studies, Acurio graduated in European cookery and returned to Lima where, in partnership with his wife, he opened the first Astrid y Gaston restaurant. He experimented with the local cuisine, which has 12 distinct regional variations and numerous immigrant influences, researched local foods and encouraged farmers to reintroduce varieties that had begun to disappear. Reinventing and adapting traditions, he creates delicious food that celebrates the history of Peru’s cultural development and the nutritional diversity of its natural resources. Gaston Acurio is honoured for his significant contribution to culinary arts, for raising the profile of Peruvian cuisine and introducing its unique delights to the world, for fostering local development through creating pride in Peruvian culture and identity, and for highlighting the essential relationship between nature’s biodiversity and cultural diversity. Read more
Cross water Ecolodge, Nankun Mountains, China 2006 – by Principal 2009 Prince Claus Laureate Simón Vélez. Photo: Hitesh
Portrait of Simón Veléz, 2009. Photo:Pedro Franco
The Committee for the Prince Claus Awards
Since 1997 the Prince Claus Awards are presented annually to artists, thinkers and cultural organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Through its Awards programme, the Fund seeks to identify and celebrate artists, cultural groups and organisations in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, who are doing outstanding work to expose, analyse, reduce and resolve conflicts through their innovative cultural actions.
