Nam June Paik Award 2016 – The Nominees

International Award 2016

Lawrence Abu Hamdan / Winner 2016

As well as being the Armory Show commissioned artist, in 2015 Abu Hamdan’s work was also included in the New Museum Triennial in New York. The artist’s video The All-Hearing, 2014, was selected for the 44th  International Film Festival Rotterdam. His works are part of collections at MoMA, New York, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and the Arts Council England.

In 2013 Abu Hamdan’s audio documentary The Freedom of Speech Itself was submitted as evidence at the UK asylum tribunal, where the artist himself was called to testify as an expert witness. He continues to make sonic analyses for legal investigations and advocacy – most recently his work was prominently part of the No More Forgotten Lives-campaign for Defence for Children International. The artist’s forensic audio investigations are conducted as part of his research for Forensic Architecture at Goldsmiths College London, where he is also a PhD candidate and associate lecturer. Abu Hamdan’s writings can be found in Sternberg Press, Manifesta Journal and Cabinet Magazine. His award winning installation Earshot has first been shown at Portikus, Frankfurt in spring 2016.

Trisha Baga

Trisha Baga was born in Venice, Florida in 1985. Today she lives and works in New York City. She attended the Cooper Union School of Art (BFA 2007) and the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College (MFA 2010). Among others, her works are in the permanent collection of the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Neïl Beloufa

The French-Algerian artist Neïl Beloufa was born in 1985 in Paris. He studied at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Cooper Union in New York, and Le Fresnoy-Studio National des Arts Contemporain in Tourcoing.

In 2015 he was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp. Beloufa has received many other honours: the Meurice Prize for Contemporary Art (Paris 2013), the Audi Talent Award (Paris 2011) and the Studio Collector Prize by Agnes b., Paris and Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing 2011). Moreover, he was awarded the Grand Prizes at the 54th and 57th Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Germany (2008 and 2011) and the Grand Prize at Indie-Lisboa (2009).

Katja Novitskova

1984 Katja Novitskova was born in Talinn, Estonia and now she lives and works between Amsterdam and Berlin. She studied graphic design at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam and holds an MSc at University of Lübeck, Germany (2007). In 2017 she will represent Estonia at the 57th Biennale di Venezia.

National Award 2016

Malte Bruns

Malte Bruns was born in Bielefeld in 1984. His studies of media art under Elger Esser at the College of Design in Karlsruhe from 2006 until 2009 were followed by further studies under Georg Herold at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 2009 until 2014. As part of this latter course of study he was a visiting student in the class of Stephan Huber at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich in 2012. He graduated as a “Meisterschüler” of Georg Herold in 2014.

Henning Fehr & Philipp Rühr

Philipp Rühr (born in Brühl in 1986) and Henning Fehr (born in Erlangen in 1985) got to know one another as students in the class of Christopher Williams at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf. Since 2011 they have been working together on artistic projects, their preferred medium being film/ video. The artists pay particular attention to the form of presentation of their films, for which they create an environment akin to that of a cinema auditorium, the aim being to develop appropriate forms of film presentation within the context of an exhibition. This they do by creating situations that invite the visitor to “dwell awhile” and allow himself or herself to adopt a slower, more meditative way of seeing things. The contemplative slowness of their films, however, is not an end in itself but rather opens up a spatio-temporality that allows the viewer to relativize extremely specific individual images to one another.

Tamaki Watanabe & Walter Zurborg

The artists Tamaki Watanabe and Walter Zurborg have been working together since 2010.
Walter Zurborg (born in Vechta in 1980) studied sound art and sculpture at the Braunschweig University of Art, graduating as a “Meisterschüler” of Ulrich Eller in 2009.

Tamaki Watanabe (born in Kobe, Japan, in 1974) first studied painting at the Musashino Art University in Tokyo and then, from 2005 until 2010, sculpture and sound art at the Braunschweig University of Art. In 2010 she was likewise a “Meisterschüler” of Ulrich Eller.

In the exhibition:
Winner National Award 2014

Manuel Graf

Manuel Graf (born in Bühl, Baden in 1978) lives and works in Düsseldorf. In 2015, in collaboration with the TwoDoCollection, he exhibited the Doppelgaengers, objects that conflate sculpture with 3D animation. He also conceived, together with Hans-Jürgen Hafner, the transhistorical exhibition The Art of the Turks at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf.

His animations have been shown at many international venues, including the ICA, London, the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, the South London Gallery, the Kunst-Werke, Berlin, the Filmmuseum in Vienna and the Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.