"DaimlerChrysler Award South African Contemporary Art 2000"
0000-00-00 until 0000-00-00
DaimlerChrysler
Stuttgart / Cape Town, , DE Germany

The recipient of the first DaimlerChrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art 2000 is Kay Hassan, a Johannesburg-based South African artist. DaimlerChrysler has a number of cultural, social and youth projects, but this is the first time the corporation has focussed on creating an award to promote excellence in art worldwide.

PThe jury members are all experts in their respective fields and include Okwui Enwezor (New York/Berlin), art director of Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany; Dr Martin Hentschel, director of the Württemberg Art Society, Stuttgart; Marilyn Martin, director of the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; David Koloane, artist and curator from Johannesburg; Lallitha Jawahirilal, a professor at the University of Durban-Westville; and Zwelethu Mthethwa, artist and lecturer from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town.

The jury gave these reasons for their decision: The first DaimlerChrysler Award to Kay Hassan is a recognition of the powerful and critical example of not only his recent work, but also of a career which for two decades has been engaged in a sustained inquiry into the place of art as an imaginative creative enterprise and a space of dialogue and debate within the framework of a budding civil society.

Hassans work is equally exemplified by his gifted ability to bring to his art the language of the principled individual position, a search for the connection between the private and public political and artistic sociological and psychological. His sensitive and poetic investigations into the fraught context of the traumatic historical past make even more acute the necessity of art as part of the ongoing national conversation in South Africas pursuit for spiritual renewal and political and social transformation.

Hassan has been able to accomplish much with unflinching courage, vision and bold experimentation, fusing technology with the quotidian stuff of daily existence. He has equally continuously and consistently challenged the limits of his own artistic purpose, in turn, providing the vital links with unstinting individual vision between his art and a broader challenging public in South Africa and abroad. This award salutes both his excellence and powerful example.

With this award, DaimlerChrysler assists talented South African artists to obtain greater international recognition. The idea behind the award is to raise the profile of South African culture at home and abroad, so that the international community becomes more aware of the high standard of contemporary South African art.

The award is worth in total DM100 000 (about R300 000). It comprises a cash prize, a full-colour catalogue, and a bursary for a study visit which may be taken up in Germany as well as the United States. DaimlerChrysler will also sponsor exhibitions of the artists works in Stuttgart, Germany, and countrywide in South Africa: Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. This award is an excellent example of DaimlerChryslers cultural and sociopolitical commitment.

The award, however, will be presented at a ceremony in May 2000 by Jürgen E. Schrempp, who is both Honorary Consul-General of South Africa and a Chairman of the DaimlerChrysler Board. The ceremony will take place in Germany as part of the celebration commemorating the South African national day. At the same time, an exhibition devoted solely to the works of Hassan will be inaugurated at the Württemberg Art Society in Stuttgart.>

PThe jury members are all experts in their respective fields and include Okwui Enwezor (New York/Berlin), art director of Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany; Dr Martin Hentschel, director of the Württemberg Art Society, Stuttgart; Marilyn Martin, director of the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; David Koloane, artist and curator from Johannesburg; Lallitha Jawahirilal, a professor at the University of Durban-Westville; and Zwelethu Mthethwa, artist and lecturer from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town.

The jury gave these reasons for their decision: The first DaimlerChrysler Award to Kay Hassan is a recognition of the powerful and critical example of not only his recent work, but also of a career which for two decades has been engaged in a sustained inquiry into the place of art as an imaginative creative enterprise and a space of dialogue and debate within the framework of a budding civil society.

Hassans work is equally exemplified by his gifted ability to bring to his art the language of the principled individual position, a search for the connection between the private and public political and artistic sociological and psychological. His sensitive and poetic investigations into the fraught context of the traumatic historical past make even more acute the necessity of art as part of the ongoing national conversation in South Africas pursuit for spiritual renewal and political and social transformation.

Hassan has been able to accomplish much with unflinching courage, vision and bold experimentation, fusing technology with the quotidian stuff of daily existence. He has equally continuously and consistently challenged the limits of his own artistic purpose, in turn, providing the vital links with unstinting individual vision between his art and a broader challenging public in South Africa and abroad. This award salutes both his excellence and powerful example.

With this award, DaimlerChrysler assists talented South African artists to obtain greater international recognition. The idea behind the award is to raise the profile of South African culture at home and abroad, so that the international community becomes more aware of the high standard of contemporary South African art.

The award is worth in total DM100 000 (about R300 000). It comprises a cash prize, a full-colour catalogue, and a bursary for a study visit which may be taken up in Germany as well as the United States. DaimlerChrysler will also sponsor exhibitions of the artists works in Stuttgart, Germany, and countrywide in South Africa: Pretoria, Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg. This award is an excellent example of DaimlerChryslers cultural and sociopolitical commitment.

The award, however, will be presented at a ceremony in May 2000 by Jürgen E. Schrempp, who is both Honorary Consul-General of South Africa and a Chairman of the DaimlerChrysler Board. The ceremony will take place in Germany as part of the celebration commemorating the South African national day. At the same time, an exhibition devoted solely to the works of Hassan will be inaugurated at the Württemberg Art Society in Stuttgart.

Related Links:

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Other Important Exhibitions in Germany