Photo: Artport
As part of its 10th anniversary programme, Kim? Contemporary Arts Centre (Riga, Latvia) has announced four finalists of the Kim? Residency Award 2019. The nominees are Kaspars Groševs, Atis Jākobsons, Andrejs Strokins and Diāna Tamane. The winner will spend two months as the resident artist in Artport, Tel Aviv.
The winner will be announced on 22 November 2018 at 2:30 pm in a ceremony that will take place at the Art Academy of Latvia. The event will be attended by Vardit Gross, the director of Artport and the head of its residency program. First, she will give a presentation on the work of Artport, its resident artists and future plans, followed by comments on the experiences gained while visiting the nominees’ studios in Riga.
The annual Kim? Residency Award is an opportunity for a single Latvian artist or a duo of artists to take part in a residency program with one of the Kim? partner organizations. The first award winner, Darja Meļņikova, spent two months of summer 2015 at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin; the second winner, Ieva Epnere, became a resident artist in the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York for two months in autumn 2016, while the 2017 winner of the award, Ieva Kraule, spent three months at Gasworks in London.
In autumn 2018, Kim? Contemporary Arts Centre nominated 12 artists for the first round of the award. All of them met the following criteria: they are active participants in exhibitions and parallel events in Latvia and abroad, they are under the age of 40 and have taken part in at least one Kim? project in the last decade.
The artist portfolios were reviewed and final nominees were selected by an international jury: Vardit Gross, Artport, Tel Aviv; Tobias Kaspar, artist, Zurich/Riga; Virginija Januskevičiūte, CAC, Vilnius; and Ian Rosen, artist and the director of Misako Rosen gallery in Tokyo.
Jury members comment on the nominated artists
On Andrejs Strokins
“Strong photographs. He is playing with layering and working with photographs also as materials, so clearly informed by the cultural context of the region. Moments of bizarre, great work with archives. It would be interesting to see how his practice would develop when displaced, if the artist would be given the chance to explore archives in Israel, their political meaning, meet other artists who are working with archives, etc.”
On Atis Jākobsons
“Strong images and concepts. Working with spiritual concepts is pretty rare in contemporary art yet the context of Israel would give him a direct connection to many religious and spiritual people and organizations. It is almost foreseeable how the spirit of Jerusalem and other holy places would resonate in his work.”
On Diāna Tamane
“Without much theatrics, dramatizing, or unnecessary finger-pointing, her language appears contemporary and relatable. The residency in Tel Aviv could ensure a productive distance to her autobiographical environment that so far has been the fundamental source material for her work.”
On Kaspars Groševs
“He is an artist who enjoys familiarity with a range of different traditions of writing, poetry, and storytelling (verbal or otherwise), which self-directed residencies allow. His drawings and film-work also show hunger for modes of envisioning and address that are not common in our mainstream culture and are not enclosed strictly within the contemporary art system.”
Artport, founded six years ago by the Ted Arison Family Foundation, is a non-profit art organization fostering and promoting contemporary Israeli art. Through an Israeli and an international visual arts residency program, exhibitions, workshops, art book fair and professional training, Artport advances artists and the connections between art and society.