26 August 2006
BEIRUT: The Netherlands-based Prince Claus Fund has announced the winners of its annual awards, which will be given to recipients in person in December and January, either in the artists' country of residence or in Amsterdam. Iranian graphic designer Reza Abedini has won the principal award, worth 100,000 euros (about $128,000). Abedini is a professor of graphic design and visual culture at Tehran University. He is well-known for his film posters and book covers, along with his work on logos and corporate branding. According to a statement by the Prince Claus Fund, Abedini's award recognizes "the impact of graphic design as a powerful global medium of communication" and honors the artist's "personal creativity ... and individual skill in adapting the knowledge and achievements of Iran's artistic heritage, making it new and compelling today."
Winners of the other ten awards, worth 25,000 euros each, include, among others, Lebanon's Christine Tohme, an independent curator and the director of Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts; Afghanistan's Lida Abdul, a visual artist who works in film, video, photography, installation and live performance; Pakistan's Madeeha Gauhar, an actor, theater director and women's rights activist who established the Ajoka Theater; and Al-Kamandjati, a non-profit organization that gives music lessons to Palestinian children living in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and South Lebanon.
The Prince Claus Fund is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2007. For the latest awards cycle, it is revisiting several of its central tenets, such as locating and opening areas of "cultural silence," creating sanctuaries for cultural expression, examining the meaning of beauty in different contexts and the art of co-existence.
The Prince Claus Fund takes a broad view of culture and works to create a platform for intellectual and artistic exchange. The awards are given annually to artists, thinkers and cultural organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Previously, the legendary Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish has won the Prince Claus Fund's principal award.
This year's award is particularly well-timed for the Beirut-based Tohme, who has spent the past 13 years building a loose, logistically flexible, alternative infrastructure for cultural production and artistic expression in a country that doesn't pour much in the way of funds into such efforts. It is perhaps due to this malleability that, despite the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon this summer, Tohme is presently in the throes of several new projects, including an upcoming retrospective for Mohamed Soueid, one of the pioneers of Beirut's video art scene, and a series of 10 short videos by young artists responding to the war.
Tohme co-founded Ashkal Alwan in 1994, and she has been organizing the Home Works Forum on Cultural Practices since 2001. Rather famously at this point, the forum, which brings together artists, writers, thinkers and other cultural players from all over the world, has taken place three times after being delayed three times - in 2001, due to the outbreak of the second intifada; in 2003, due to the start of the war in Iraq, and in 2005, due to the assassination of Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The fourth edition is scheduled for 2007. - The Daily Star
