Posted on March 10, 2015
Established in 2010 as an initiative of the Gerrit Lansing Education Fund, the Independent Vision Curatorial Award reflects ICIs commitment to supporting international curators early in their careers who have shown exceptional creativity and prescience in their exhibition-making, research, and related writing. The award is given every two years to an early or mid-career curator to support their independent practice through ICI, and gives them a platform to pursue and publish their research online. The Independent Vision Curatorial Award is significant in that it is one of the very few awards in the world to recognize rising curatorial talent.
2014 Recipient: Eva Barois De Caevel
Eva Barois De Caevel received the Independent Vision Curatorial Award in 2014. Barois De Caevel was selected by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. “Eva Barois De Caevels unflinching curatorial practice tackles some of todays most urgent issues, including sexuality and human rights, in a postcolonial world. Working collaboratively to encourage dialogue and participation among her audiences, with issues both local and global, she is courageously expanding the curatorial field. Nancy Spector Eva Barois De Caevel is assistant curator at Raw Material Company, Dakar, and works as an independent curator. She graduated from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV in Contemporary Art History in 2011 and in Curatorial Training in 2012, with her research focusing primarily on moving images. She has been working concurrently on academic research as well as on postcolonial questions and socially engaged practices in contemporary art, and on their interaction: how socially engaged practices in contemporary art can become think tanks on postcolonial issues. Barois De Caevel completed a curatorial residency at Raw Material Company centre for art, knowledge and society, Dakar, which consisted of conceiving a yearlong program (January 2014 to January 2015) on sexual liberties in Africa through contemporary African art. She curated the first event of the program: Who Said It Was Simple. The exhibition included screenings, debates, a performance, and a seminar. She continued her collaboration with director Koyo Kouoh, working with her on several projects, such as Body Talk – Feminism, Sexuality and the Body in the Work of African Women Artists (to be held at WIELS, Brussels, in February 2015), and Streamlines, a project that makes the oceans the metaphorical focal point for an international group exhibition which will examine the cultural repercussion of the global stream of goods and trade between the South and the North (to be held at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, in October 2015). Her next projects will focus on ways of displaying colonial legacies and contemporary imperialisms in vernacular and daily elements (sexuality, language, body image, garments, food, etc.) as well as through art forms and specific curatorial tools. She was part of the first TURN Meeting On Perspectives, Facts and Fictions (June 26-28, 2014, Berlin), a project of Kulturstifung Des Bundes, Germany. The TURN fund was established in 2012 with the purpose of promoting artistic exchange and cooperation between German and African artists and institutions. She is co-founder of Cartel de Kunst, an international collective and solidarity network of emerging curators based in Paris. Read an interview between Barois De Caevel and María Del Carmen Carrión, ICI’s Director of Public Programs, here.
2012 Recipients: Nav Haq & Jay Sanders
In 2012, Hans Ulrich Obrist selected Nav Haq and Jay Sanders to jointly receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award. “Each curator is establishing a unique voice, developing their practice by initiating projects independently, as well as having worked in a diverse range of institutions. Nav Haq frequently takes us into the polyphony of art centers, creating shows and projects that broaden the scope of our thinking. Jay Sanders stays close to artists, gaining a strong understanding of an artists body of workboth emerging and overlookedso that ultimately audiences can know an artist deeper. Hans Ulrich Obrist, October, 2012 Nav Haq has been Curator at MuHKA, Antwerp, since April 2012. From 20072012 he was Exhibitions Curator at Arnolfini, Bristol, and from 20042007 he was Curator at Gasworks, London. Haq was previously also a guest editor at Book Works, London, developing a series of artists books with the artists Rosalind Nashashibi and Olivia Plender. In 2011, he was a selection committee member for the British Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Also in 2011, he curated the inaugural MARKER section at Art Dubai, inviting experimental art organizations from across Asia and the Middle East to develop special projects for the context of the fair. Haq has also contributed to numerous periodicals including Frieze, Kaleidoscope and Yishu Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, among others. Haq has curated many solo projects with artists such as Hassan Khan, Cosima von Bonin, Shilpa Gupta, Janek Simon, Katleen Vermeir & Ronny Heiremans, Imogen Stidworthy and Kerry Tribe. Group exhibitions have included Superpower: Africa in Science Fiction, co-curated with Al Cameron (2012); Museum Show a major historical survey of (semi-fictional) museums created by artists (2011); Magical Consciousness, co-curated with artist Runa Islam (2011); the two-person exhibition The Sea Wall presenting works by Haegue Yang and Felix Gonzalez-Torres (2011); Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art, co-curated with Tirdad Zolghadr (2006-09); and Contour Biennial 2007, Mechelen, Belgium. In collaboration with Bassam El Baroni and Jeremy Beaudry, he initiated the online project The ARPANET Dialogues. Jay Sanders is currently the Curator & Curator of Performance at The Whitney Museum of American Art. Prior to this he was Gallery Director at Greene Naftali in New York from 20052010 and Gallery Director at Marianne Boesky from 20002005. Recent curatorial projects include the 76th Whitney Biennial, co-curated with Elisabeth Sussman (2012); NUMINA Lente, a three-evening music and performance festival, Clemente Soto Velez Center, New York (April 2011); Looking Back: The Third White Columns Annual, White Columns, New York (2008); Change our fates, hobble the plague, start with time, co-curated with Paul Chan, Lyon Biennale (2007). Sanders has worked closely with a number of artists including Tony Conrad, Bernadette Corporation, John Knight, Gelitin and the Estate of Paul Sharits to develop new projects. He has also programmed performance, music, and film exhibitions at such venues as the former Whitney branch at Altria, Issue Project Room, Anthology Film Archives, Sculpture Center, EAI, The Stone, Tonic, and for Performa. He is a member of the collaborative performance group Grand Openings, and has staged large-scale events at MoMA, the Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle), MUMOK (Vienna), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (Japan), and Anthology Film Archives for Performa ’05 (New York).
2010 Recipient: Doryun Chong
In 2010, Doryun Chong was selected to receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award. At the time, Chong was the Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at MoMA. He is currently the Chief Curator of M+ Hong Kong. Chong was selected to receive the Independent Vision Curatorial Award for the recent exhibitions he has curated and co-curated in a range of venues nationally and internationally, including Bruce Nauman: Days (MoMA, 2010); Brinkmanship: Park Chan-Kyong and Sean Snyder (REDCAT, 2010) with Clara Kim; Haegue Yang: Integrity of the Insider (Walker Art Center, 200910); Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis (Walker Art Center, 20089); Brave New Worlds (Walker Art Center, 2007) with Yasmil Raymond; and the 2006 Busan Biennial. Through these exhibitions Chong has not only demonstrated multiple, global understandings of artworks and their contexts, but also an unusual eloquence in the possibilities of display and discourse. Chongs innovative research skills draw on several Asian and Romance languages and his training in Western European and East Asian philosophy and art history. Considered the top translator of writing on contemporary art from Korea, Chong is also responsible for the groundbreaking lexicon on artist Huang Yong Pings complex web of meanings, intentions, history, conflict, and culture. Read an interview with Chong and ICI’s Director-at-Large Kate Fowle here.