The 2009 Creative Arts Fellows are:
MONA HATOUM
Born in Beirut to a Palestinian family, Mona Hatoum has lived and worked in London since 1975. She originally went to England just to visit, but remained after the outbreak of the civil war in Lebanon prevented her from returning.
After studying at the Byam Shaw and the Slade School of Art in London, Hatoum became widely known in the mid-1980s for a series of performance and video works that focused on the human body. Since the early 1990s, her work has moved increasingly toward large-scale installations that aim to engage the viewer in conflicting emotions of desire and revulsion, fear and fascination. She often transforms familiar objects—such as chairs, beds, cots, kitchen utensils and even the human body itself—into strange, threatening and sometimes dangerous things. In “Corps étranger” (1994), for instance, a video installation displays an endoscopic journey through the foreign interior terrain of her own body.
Hatoum has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Turner Prize (1995), Venice Biennale (1995 and 2005), Documenta XI (2002), Biennale of Sydney (2006) and Auckland Triennial (2007). Her solo exhibitions have been featured at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (1994), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (1997), the New Museum of Contemporary Art and MoMA, New York (1998), the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (1998), the Castello di Rivoli, Turin (1999), the Tate Britain, London (2000), Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kunstmuseum Bonn, and Magasin 3, Stockholm (2004), and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2005). The XIII Biennale Donna, in the Palazzo Massari in Ferrara (2008), was entirely devoted to a Mona Hatoum solo exhibition entitled “Undercurrents.”
The 2004 winner of the prestigious Sonning Prize, given biennially by the University of Copenhagen, Hatoum is also the 2004 winner of the Roswitha Haftmann prize from Zurich. From 2003 to 2004, she served as Artist-in-Residence on the DAAD program (Berliner Künstlerprogramm, Deutscher Akademischer Austrauschdienst). More recently, she was named the 2008 Rolf Schock Prize laureate in art. She currently divides her time between Berlin and London.
http://www.whitecube.com/artists/hatoum/
KOFI SETORDJI
Though his graphic art, sculpture, and installations have been exhibited all over the world since as early as 1982, Kofi Setordji lives, works and organizes artistic resources in his hometown of Accra, Ghana. He began working as a graphic artist after high school. Since then, he has produced works in the graphic and fine arts, from sculpture and photography to print making and theater set design. In 1984 he studied with the great Ghanaian sculptor Saka Acquaye, who taught him to cast and mold bronze and clay.
Today, Setordji prefers to work with wood, clay, stone, metal and found objects. Major exhibitions of Setordji’s work have been held in Accra, Ghana; Abidjan, the Ivory Coast; Dakar, Senegal; Lille, France; Berlin and Munich in Germany; and Geneva, Switzerland. Perhaps his best-known work is “Genocide,” a multi- dimensional installation that took four years to assemble. It dramatically expresses protest against the civil wars that have torn Africa apart from Liberia to Rwanda.
The Ghanaian government has awarded Setordji various commissions for the creation of wall reliefs, including for the museum belonging to the mausoleum of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah. Together with the French artist Di Rosa, he created the only public modern artwork in the capital city of Accra.
Setordji is active in West African regional organizations that support and mentor young artists and artisans. In 1994 he founded the ArtHAUS, which offers residences where artists share ideas and work without pressure or disturbance. He sits on the board of several institutes devoted to developing the creative arts. These include the Alliance Francaise and the NUBUKE Foundation.
http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide/engels/biografie/index.html
SHAHZIA SIKANDER
The work of Shahzia Sikander spans a variety of mediums, including drawing, large-scale wall installations, animation and video. Examining the provenance and canon of Indo-Persian miniature painting, Sikander pioneered an experimental approach to this genre in the mid-1980s in Lahore, Pakistan, and brought it into the realm of contemporary art. Her work launched a major following in Lahore, where the miniature painting department at the National College of Arts has undergone a historic transformation, becoming a sought-after choice for young artists pursuing majors in the fine arts program.
Sikander’s work deconstructs the conventional methods of addressing traditional miniature paintings and reassembles them to expand their associations, inserting new dialogues, often subversive in nature. Using wit, irony, and paradox, Sikander’s inventiveness draws upon literary, pop, media and historical contexts.
Based in New York, Sikander researches and develops her works in various locations. Recent projects were an outcome of her many visits to Laos, Berlin and Pakistan from 2006 to 2008. Sikander’s work is in collections in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Collections in California include those at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and the San Diego Museum of Art. Her work is also included in the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis; Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, among others.
Sikander's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2007); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2007-08); and Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England (2008). Her awards include the National Pride of Honor from the Pakistani government. In 2004, Newsweek listed her as one of the most important South Asians transforming the American cultural landscape. Her work has been regularly reviewed in publications including Art Forum, Art News, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Time. In 2006, Sikander was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos. She is also a MacArthur Fellow (2007 to 2011). Recent exhibits include; Shahzia Sikander Selects: Works from the Permanent Collection, at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum; and Moving Perspectives, at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC..
http://www.shahziasikander.com/
