Sameen Agha Wins Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2024

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The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) has announced the winner of the 2024 Asian Art Prize.

Selected from 362 entries, Sameen Agha’s 2022 red marble sculpture A Home Is A Terrible Place to Love shows the collapsed walls of a three dimensional house unfolded like a cardboard box. The fragility of home is a recurring theme in the Lahore-based artist’s work.

Finalists this year included Sim Chi Yin, who submitted one of her signature light box installations probing colonial histories, and photographer and former reporter Billy HC Kwok.

For the 2023 woodcarving Red Bean Stalk, Michelle Fung was awarded the U.S. $5,000 Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize. The award, presented to the highest scoring woman besides the first prize winner, was introduced with Vogue Hong Kong’s launch in the city in 2019.

The Public Vote Prize, worth U.S. $1,000, was awarded to Filipino artist Demet. His oil painting PPE, Paint Palette Emulation layers art historical images and references to painting and optical illusions, rendered in a hyper-realistic style that could pass for collage.

The awards were presented at a charity auction gala dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong following the exhibition of the 30 finalists’ works at H Queen this month.

Last year’s awardee, Parul Gupta, was among this year’s jury panel, alongside former recipient Debbie Han, curator David Elliott, Para Site‘s Billy Tang, and critic Marian Pastor Roces.

The event raised over U.S. $220,000 from artwork sales and donations, with prices generally falling under five-figures. Half will go to the foundation and half returned to the artists.

Funds will support SAF initiatives such as Make It Better (MIB), which provides art workshops to children with learning disabilities. MIB currently serves 150 recipients every week and provides training and support to caregivers and social workers.

Howard Bilton co-established SAF in 2003 to assist disadvantaged children through the arts as education, rehabilitation, and therapy. Bilton, a tax attorney, is the founder of the Sovereign Group, which provides wealth management services from its headquarters in Gibraltar.

This autumn, the foundation will hold a retrospective that brings together the works of previous Grand Prize winners to commemorate its 20th year. —[O]

Main image: Sameen Agha. Courtesy Sovereign Art Foundation.