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.
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