UK - ARTES MUNDI 9 EXHIBITS ITS 6 FINALISTS

Founded in 2002, Artes Mundi was established as an initiative by artist and cultural entrepreneur, William Wilkins CBE. It is best known for its international Exhibition and Prize which takes place in Cardiff every two years. Typically, the number of artists selected for exhibition varies with each iteration and one of these shortlisted artists is awarded the prize of £40,000, the largest art prize in Britain and one of the most significant in the world. These are events of extensive international profile and critical reputation.

American artist Carrie Mae Weems, celebrated for her powerful engagement with Black and female representation, encompasses cultural identity, racism, class, political systems and the consequences of power. A new photographic installation, The Push, The Call, The Scream, The Dream reflects on the late civil rights activist John Robert Lewis within the context of the present, while a selection of large-scale pieces from her recent public art campaign interrogates the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of colour while offering messages of hope. 

A new 16mm film, About Falling by Puerto Rican artist Beatriz Santiago Muñoz forms part of a film and video presentation that poetically creates a layered installation of non-linear narratives considering the histories and continuing presence of various colonisers on Puerto Rico, its landscape, people and culture.

Dominican Republic-born and New York-based artist Firelei Báez, has produced four major new large-scale paintings celebrating Diasporic narrative and black female subjectivity, while South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape materially and conceptually engages with place, history, and the consequences of the trans-Atlantic slave-trade through objects, drawing and song, presenting art as embodying the potential for acknowledgement and reconciliation. 

Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi’s haunting video triptych The Angels of Testimony tackles the legacy of the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), dismantling cultural taboos by acknowledging shameful histories. Prabhakar Pachpute—whose family worked in the coal mines of central India for three generations—draws on shared cultural heritage with the Welsh mining community to create an installation of new paintings and canvas banners that harness the iconography of protest and collective action.