Amar Kanwar receives the 2014 Leonore Annenberg Prize For Art And Social Change

By Dilip -
The annual award goes to artists whose work engages with critical social issues. This year’s prize will be presented at the 2014 Creative Time Summit: Stockholm in Sweden.
Creative Time today announced that New Delhi-based artist Amar Kanwar has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. Generously supported by Creative Time board member Elizabeth K. Sorensen, the prestigious annual prize is given to artists whose work, like that of Kanwar’s, provokes awareness of and engagement with critical issues of our time, working to advance the causes of equity and justice. It carries an award of 25,000 USD and, for the first time, nominees were culled from an international open call and the winner will have access to an innovative, new partnership with The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands. 
Mr. Kanwar, who creates complex films on critical socio-political issues, will use his prize earnings to advance his latest project. Titled The Sovereign Forest, the work comprises a constellation of moving and still images, texts, books, pamphlets, albums, music, objects, seeds, events, and processes, brought together in an ambitious attempt to reopen discussion and initiate a creative response to our understanding of crime, politics, human rights, and ecology. Creative Time will share the results of his work in 2015.
Mr. Kanwar was selected from a pool of over 250 artists, as Creative Time opened the nomination process to recommendations from the public for the first time since its inception in 2009. He will officially receive the Prize on November 15 at the 2014 Creative Time Summit: Stockholm, an annual conference on art and social change. This year’s Summit, in its first iteration outside of New York City, will be held in Stockholm, Sweden. Presented in partnership with Public Art Agency Sweden (PAAS), and co-curated by Creative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson and Director of PAAS Magdalena Malm. Summit: Stockholm will address the challenges posed by migration, the growth of nationalism and homophobia, and the changing uses of the public sphere. It will take place on November 14 and 15 at Stockholm’s Kulturhuset. 
This new partnership between Creative Time and The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands will enable Kanwar to convene a select group of thought leaders, policy experts, activists, and others prior to the Summit for a discussion of the issues at the heart of his work and to develop actionable steps and achieve specific outcomes. The artist and other discussion participants will then engage in a dialogue on the Summit stage, sharing the content and results of their meeting. Ms. Sorensen states, “I am thrilled to support the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Justice, as well as the new partnership between Creative Time and Sunnylands. The creation of this partnership not only expands the benefits of the Prize for the winner but also brings its benefits to those who participate in the important discussion of how to create change.”
Laura Raicovich, Creative Time’s Director of Global Initiatives, of which the Summit is a key program, says: “Selecting the Annenberg Prize winner is always difficult, with so many worthy nominees. Amar Kanwar stood out this year for the ways in which he pushes the narrative and technical limits of traditional documentary filmmaking to create works that simultaneously explore history, bear witness to the present, and connect the personal to the political in subtle, poetic ways. We are thrilled to give him the 2014 Prize, and grateful to Elizabeth Sorenson for enabling us to do so. We are also thrilled that our partnership with Sunnylands begins this year, expanding the impact of the Annenberg Prize in meaningful ways.”
For more information, click here.
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/amar-kanwar-receives-the-2014-leonore-annenberg-prize-for-art-and-social-change/
Film review - The Lightning Testimonies, Amar Kanwar (2007)
Jan 26, 2014
Lucky for us in Chicago that Amar Kanwar is no stranger to our city. The Renaissance Society brought him in 2003 after Susanne Ghez, a co-curator of Documenta 11 saw his video, A Season Outside. Like gallery goers here ...
Art and its aftertaste - a conversation with Amar Kanwar
Aug 30, 2012

Kanwar, who holds the rare honour of being selected for three consecutive dOCUMENTA exhibitions — in 2002, 2007 and 2012 — held at Kassel in Germany, finds the interest in his work reassuring, but cautions that “in the ...

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