We, the members of the Jury for this 2014 Young Artists Award, would like, first of all, to say that we acknowledge the tragic ongoing circumstances in Palestine for artists and for all communities. We acknowledge the experience of the recent devastating attacks on Gaza and the situations that are still playing out in many parts of the West Bank. We acknowledge the grief of Palestine. That the young artists in this year’s Award programme were able under such a situation to continue workings is, to us, the essence of sumud, of steadfastness, and of peaceful resistance.
We thank the Foundation for their confidence in us to make the difficult decisions we have been asked to make as jurors in this programme, and for their generous hospitality. We congratulate the curator, Viviana Checchia, for her dedication and commitment in working with the nine selected artists over the preceding months and for presenting the final exhibition in such a professional manner. We also commend all the artists for their participation in the online meetings and discussions that preceded the final works that we see in the exhibition and which contributed to the development of their ideas and actual works.
Arriving at our final decisions entailed four full days of meetings and discussions. Our discussions were broad and rigorous – not only about the work of the artists, but also about the role of the institution and of curators, and on the nature of this particular Award as part of the 2nd Qalandiya International and its theme of ‘Archives Lived and Shared’. This was the first time that the Award’s application process had asked young artists to propose works within a thematic framework. We often had differing opinions on the problematics of introducing such a themed process into the context of this particular programme, but we were all impressed by the artists who successfully navigated connections between the past and present, who studied historic material and skillfully used it to create contemporary expressions.
We gave careful consideration to the artists’ intentions, their initial applications, how their work developed and to the sincerity of their efforts. Although the interviews with the artists were very helpful, in the final analysis we based our decisions primarily on the overall artistic quality of the work that were featured in the final exhibition. We also paid particular attention to those artists who had developed and enriched their original starting point as expressed in their applications.
There is a translation that happens between an event taking place and its becoming archive and as Walter `Benjamin reminds us in his 1921 essay “the task of the translator”, this translation has a mechanics of its own and the translator is indeed an artist. Each of the nine shortlisted artists used their own specific set of tools and frames of reference to shed light on the mechanics of this translation.
Despite the difficult task of having to arrive at final decisions and choosing some winners over others, we congratulate all the artists for their dedication and commitment. All are winners in their own way by being part of this Programme, but inevitably we had to make tough choices.
We would like to begin by giving a special commendation to Majdal Nateel for her work, Without Coffins. We felt this work contributes to a body of work that articulates the difficult subject of the physical remnant of death and human trauma. Deeply moving, the project resonates with the way in which the popular arts in Palestine have represented martyrs and the history and pain that is present in communities who continue to wait for the return of their loved ones.
Making our announcements in reverse order, we award the Third Prize jointly to Noor Abed and Farah Saleh. The imagery in Noor Abed’s Penelope was powerful and spoke to the subject matter, but it also takes us to other places and does not only limit us to the obvious metaphors of waiting and repetition in the mythical story. There is a raw creative power in the work, and we recognize that the artist had gone to considerable efforts to express her ideas in a difficult form that was ambitious and technically challenging. The carefully considered choice of medium speaks to a mythic past, with harmony and sensitivity.
Farah Saleh created a portal for us to connect to a history that has not been touched on or openly raised. Her work, A Fidayee Son in Moscow, not only shows us new information but it is an interpretation that opens multiple readings of the same event. We were impressed by the artist’s decision to intersect her profession as a dancer with the creation of video and installation works, two processes with which she was engaging with for the first time. She recuperates “the gesture” in this work and offers it with new readings, reminding us of the importance of the tradition of the language of the body within the history of the visual arts.
We award the Second Prize to Noor Abu Arafeh. We considered her Observational Desire on a Memory that Remains compelling and multilayered, complex and original, as well as aesthetically beautiful. It is a work which opens up questions and new appreciations of historical material, of paintings that were – and still are – iconic. In assuming the position of the painter and imagining what he or she saw, the artist honors their works with poetic translations in another medium, shedding light on how imagination teases history. We saw an element of magic in the work, an almost, spectral reincarnation which exposes the apparitions that are ever present and not forgotten, summoning the spirit of the past into the present moment.
And so to the First Prize – The Hassan Hourani Award – which we award to the painter Bashar Khalaf for his series of paintings Shadow of the Shadow. We were impressed by Bashar’s reverence and respect for the source of his inspiration, the work of the artist Sliman Mansour, and for the bold steps he took in bringing the senior artist’s narrative into the present time. We were impressed by this young artist’s compositional rigour, the genuineness of the expression in a group of paintings that are unusually mature for a young artist and by his understanding of his relationship to the history of Palestinian painting. We thought the work belies a deep struggle beneath the deceptively smooth finish of these paintings and that there is an intelligence in the decisions that have been made in them. We felt that here is an artist who is confidently developing his own vocabulary within the medium of painting and who is clearly working with his own personal grammar and a rich symbolism.
And so, finally, we congratulate the prizewinners whose work we have specifically commended here. But we would like to conclude by wishing each and every one of the nine artists who participated in this programme every success in the future with their work and careers.
The members of Jury for the Young Artist of the Year Award 2014:
Asuncion Molinos Gordo, Kamal Jafari, Michael Rakowitz, Nida Sinnokrot and Samia Halaby.
28th October 2014