Who Is Shortlisted for The Sovereign Asian Art Prize 2023?
Cop Shiva, No Longer a Memory (2022). Photograph. 99 x 71 cm. Courtesy the artist and The Sovereign Art Foundation.
The Sovereign Art Foundation has announced a not-so-short shortlist of 30 artists for the 19th edition of its prestigious Asia prize.
The winner of the US $30,000 Grand Prize will be announced alongside the $5,000 Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize and $1,000 Public Vote Prize winners on 19 May.
The diverse pool of finalists for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize, whittled down from 165 nominees, stretches from Australia to Kazakhstan.
Among those in the running are six artists from Hong Kong: Sharon Lee, Sophie Cheung Hing Yee, Stanley Shum, Tam Tak-hei, Justin Lim and Tang Kwong San.
A fascination with architectural forms permeates the works of several finalists including Tam Tak-hei‘s miniature building fronts in The Figmental Facade (2022) and Vietnamese photographer Nguyễn Thế Sơn’s Helios Tower 1 (2018).
Embroidery weaves its way into the works of several artists, including the Philippines’ Cian Dayrit, Nepal’s Priyanka Singh Maharjan, and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who depicts historic flooding in Pakistan’s Sindh province.
Climate change also informs Australian sculptor Lindy Lee‘s Snowflakes and Fire (2021), which was made by perforating the canvas hundreds of times with fire.Other notable works include Cao Yu‘s breast milk Fountain, Celine Liu’s unlikely ping pong match featuring Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, Shaarbek Amankul wolf-man like collage HOMO HOMINI LUPUS EST, and former policeman Cop Shiva’s vibrant portrait photography.
The full shortlist can be found on the Art Foundation’s website.
Curator and writer David Elliot, who chairs the panel of judges that will select the winning work, praised nominators for ‘bringing not so widely known talent to our attention.’
Across the finalists’ work, Elliot observed ‘a feeling of urgency—a critique of our times that on occasion approaches emotions of disgust and horror’.
These emotions are ‘leavened by a sardonic sense of humour as artists from many different perspectives come together to examine, enlighten and exorcise what are at times unpalatable truths,’ he said.
A public exhibition of the finalists’ works will take place from 10 to 18 May at H Queens on Queens Road, Central Hong Kong, followed by a charity auction for the Foundation’s Make It Better (MIB) programme.
Last year’s winner Azin Zolfaghari—who joins this year’s panel of judges—won the 2022 Grand Prize with a hyperrealist painting of a bleak apartment facade. —[O]
Main image: Cop Shiva, No Longer a Memory (2022). Photograph. 99 x 71 cm. Courtesy the artist and The Sovereign Art Foundation.
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