For Immediate Release

PERFORMA WINS TWO AWARDS
FROM INTERNATIONAL ART CRITICS ASSOCIATION
FOR MAJOR WORKS FROM PERFORMA 09 BIENNIAL

Best Digital Media, Video, Film, and Performance, Second Place
William Kentridge, I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine
Curated by RoseLee Goldberg

Best Thematic Show in New York, Second Place
100 Years (version #2, PS 1, Nov 2009)
Curated by Klaus Biesenbach and RoseLee Goldberg

New York, NY— Performa is pleased to announce it has been honored with two prestigious awards from the International Art Critics Association/AICA-USA in the categories of Best Digital Media, Video, Film, and Performance for William Kentridge’s acclaimed Performa 09 performance I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine, curated by RoseLee Goldberg, Performa Founding Director and Curator, and Best Thematic Show in New York for the major exhibition 100 Years (version #2, PS 1, Nov 2009), curated by Klaus Biesenbach, Director of MoMA PS 1 and a Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, and RoseLee Goldberg, Performa.

The AICA-USA Awards honor artists, museums, curators, and cultural institutions for their conception and realization of exhibitions from the previous year. AICA’s 400 active members nominated and voted on twelve categories. The 26 first and second place winners were selected from over 100 finalists. The awards will be handed out on March 14, 2011, at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

RoseLee Goldberg, Founding Director and Curator says, “We are thrilled and honored to receive two awards from the AICA-USA for their recognition of 100 Years, which established an entirely new kind of exhibition for performance and its history as well as for William Kentridge’s performance I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine, which brought a new level of excellence and excitement when it premiered during Performa 09.”

Performa Chairman Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn adds, “This is a great honor and well deserved for such an innovation organization whose mission it is to educate and explore the critical role of performance in the 20th and 21st century. I am proud to be a part of Performa.”

During Performa 09, renowned South African artist William Kentridge premiered I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine, appearing for the first time in a live performance of his own work. A comic interplay between Kentridge on stage in the flesh, and Kentridge projected life size on screen, the artist and his double used this unusual format to deliver a riveting performance-lecture on Russian Constructivism, Nikolai Gogol, the Russian Composer Dmitri Shostakovich and his opera, The Nose, which Kentridge designed and directed at the Metropolitan Opera House. Kentridge’s performance premiered November 9–10, 2010, at the Cedar Lake Theater and Studio, New York City.

Inspired by the Performa 09 biennial, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of Italian Futurism, 100 Year was organized in celebration of a hundred years of performance history, and presented documentation of key works of performance art, beginning with the Futurist Manifesto in 1909, and continuing to the present day. The first ever comprehensive history of performance art, 100 Years used this century-long timeline to present a diverse collection of film, videos, photographs, and descriptive texts in PS 1’s Third Floor Main Gallery. The exhibition was on view November 1, 2009–May 3, 2010 at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, New York.

FUNDING
Funding for William Kentridge, I Am Not Me, The Horse Is Not Mine was made possible by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, and Performa Producer’s Circle Member Liza Essers, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. Funding for 100 Years was made possible by The Annual Exhibition Fund at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and with generous support from Julia Stoschek Foundation.

ABOUT AICA-USA

AICA-USA is the United States section of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), founded in June 1949 in Paris and originally affiliated with UNESCO as an NGO (non-governmental organization). Currently there are 63 member nations representing more than 4,500 art critics worldwide. AICA-USA, headquartered in New York, is the largest national section, with a membership of over 400 distinguished critics and scholars nationwide. 



AICA-USA promotes critical discourse and is dedicated to expanding awareness of the values of art criticism as a discipline and acting in defense of the physical and moral value of art. It is the only organization to award excellence in museum and gallery exhibitions and does so to indicate the standards by which its members judge what they see.

In addition to its annual awards, AICA-USA presents panels, symposia, and a series of lectures and programs each year. These include the AICA-USA Distinguished Critic Lecture at the New School University, the AICA Commemorative Lecture at the Studio School in New York, studio visits with artists, a mentoring program for emerging art writers in partnership with the CUE Art Foundation, and an art writers workshop in partnership with Creative Capital Warhol Foundation. AICA-USA provides online resources on art criticism and professional issues on its website www.aicausa.org. Membership in AICA is a professional honor and open to critics who have been publishing in the fields of modern and contemporary art at a high level and on a continuous basis for at least three years. For more information, visit www.aicausa.org.

ABOUT PERFORMA
Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization established by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, is dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. In 2005, Performa launched New York’s first performance biennial, Performa 05, followed by Performa 07 (2007), and Performa 09 (2009). In 2011, Performa will present its fourth biennial, Performa 11 (November 1–20, 2011). For more information, visit www.performa-arts.org.

Media Contact
Ashley Tickle
Press and Marketing Manager
+ 1 212 366 5700
ashley@performa-arts.org

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