Shortlist

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, 33 (Born: Nigeria 1983, Country of residence, United States)

Iván Argote, 32 (Born: Colombia, 1983. Country of residence: France)

Firelei Báez, 35 (Born: Dominican Republic, 1980. Country of residence: United States)

Dineo Seshee Bopape, 35 (Born: South Africa, 1981. Country of residence South Africa)

Phoebe Boswell, 34 (Born: Kenya, 1982. Country of residence: United Kingdom)

Vivian Caccuri, 30 (Born: Brazil, 1986. Country of residence: Brazil)

Sol Calero, 34 (Born: Venezuela, 1982. Country of residence: Germany)

Asli Çavuşoğlu, 34 (Born: Turkey, 1982. Country of residence Turkey)

Vajiko Chachkhiani, 31 (Born: Georgia, 1985. Country of residence: Germany)

Carla Chaim, 33 (Born: Brazil, 1983. Country of residence: Brazil)

Christian Falsnaes, 35 (Born: Denmark, 1980. Country of residence: Germany)

EJ Hill, 31 (Born: United States, 1985. Country of residence: United States)

Andy Holden, 34 (Born: United Kingdom, 1982. Country of residence: UK)

Li Ran, 30 (Born: China, 1986. Country of residence: China)

Ibrahim Mahama, 29 (Born: Ghana, 1987. Country of residence Ghana)

Rebecca Moss, 25 (Born: United Kingdom, 1991. Country of residence UK)

Sasha Pirogova, 29 (Born: Russia, 1986. Country of residence Russia)

Kameelah Janan Rasheed, 31 (Born: United States, 1985. Country of residence United States)

Martine Syms, 28 (Born: United States, 1988. Country of residence United States)

Kemang Wa Lehulere, 32 (Born: South Africa, 1984. Country of residence South Africa)

Open Group (Yuriy Biley, born 1988; Pavlo Kovach, born 1987; Stanislav Turina, born 1988; Anton Varga, born 1989, Ukraine) 

Njideka Akunyili Crosby (b. 1983, Nigeria) lives in Los Angeles. Drawing on art historical, political and personal references, Njideka Akunyili Crosby creates densely layered figurative compositions that, precise in style, nonetheless conjure the complexity of contemporary experience.  In 1999 she moved to the United States, where she now lives. Her cultural identity combines strong attachments to the country of her birth and to her adopted home, a hybrid identity that is reflected in her work.  She was awarded Foreign Policy’s Leading 100 Global Thinkers of 2015 alongside the Next Generation Prize, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 2015. Recent solo exhibitions include I Refuse to be Invisible, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach (2016) and The Beautiful Ones, Art + Practice, Los Angeles (2015), staged concurrently with a solo presentation at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015). Her work is in the collections of major museums including Yale University Art Gallery, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Tate, The Norton Museum of Art, Zeitz MOCAA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MOMA, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Iván Argote (b. 1985, Colombia) studied at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and at National School of Fine Arts, Paris, France and lives and works in Paris. By creating interventions and performances for the public space, which are sometimes further developed in the format of films and installations, the artist explores the city as a space of transformation. His works has been shown extensively internationally including at SPACE, London, 2016; Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 2013; 30th Sao Paulo Biennial, Sao Paulo, 2012 ; CA2M, Madrid, 2012; Joan Miró Fundation, Barcelona, 2012, among others. He has received a number of awards: Prize of CIFO Foundation, 2014 (USA); Audi Award for Contemporary Art, 2013 (France); SAM Award for Contemporary Art, 2011 (France); Prize "Mals" Mulhouse Biennial, 2010 (France); Intervenciones TV Awards, 2009 (Spain), National Exhibition Award for Young Artists, 2005 (Colombia).

Firelei Báez (b. 1980, Dominican Republic) lives and works in New York. She makes intricate works on paper, paintings on canvas and large scale sculptures in which anthropology, science fiction, black female subjectivity and women’s work converge to explore the humor and fantasy involved in self-making within diasporic societies. She received an M.F.A. from Hunter College, a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union’s School of Art, and studied at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has had solo exhibitions at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and at Pérez Art Museum Miami. In 2016 and 2017 she will participate in group and solo museum exhibitions including at the Tarble Arts Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL, Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA, and at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg, PA. 

Dineo Seshee Bopape (b. 1981, South Africa) was born on a Sunday. If she were Ghanaian, her name would be Akosua/Akos for short. During the same year of her birth, the Brixton riots took place; two people were injured when a bomb exploded in a Durban shopping centre; bobby sands dies; 100 were killed during riots in Casablanca; MTV is launched; the Boeing 767 makes its first air flight; uMkhonto we Sizwe performs numerous underground assaults against the apartheid state. Princess Di’ of Britain marries Charles; Bob Marley dies; apartheid SA invades Angola; AIDS is identified/created/named; Selman Rushdie releases his book “Midnight’s Children”; Winnie Mandela’s banishment orders are renewed for another 5 years; in the region of her birth her paternal grandmother dies affected by dementia; people cried and people laughed...

The world’s population was at around 4.529 billion... today she (Bopape) is 1 amongst 7 billion - occupying multiple intersecting adjectives. 

Phoebe Boswell (b. 1982, Kenya) lives and works in London. Born in Nairobi to a Kikuyu mother and fourth generation British Kenyan father, and brought up as an “expatriate” in the Middle East, she combines traditional draftswomanship and digital technology to create drawings, animations and installations. Boswell studied Painting at the Slade School of Art and 2D Animation at Central St Martins, London. Boswell was nominated/shortlisted for the Art Foundation's Animation Fellowship 2012, was the first recipient of the Sky Academy Arts Scholarship. She participated in the Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art 2015 and the Biennial of Moving Images 2016 at the Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva, and recently collaborated with filmmaker Shola Amoo on a short film for the Guardian / British Council's Shakespeare Lives series. 

Vivian Caccuri (b. 1986, Brazil) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. She has developed projects in many cities in Brazil and abroad, including Manaus (Brazilian Amazon), Helsinki, Riga, Warsaw, Oslo, Valparaiso, Venice and Accra. Throughout her career she has collaborated with several musicians such as Arto Lindsay (USA/BR), Gilberto Gil (BR), Panji Anoff (Ghana), Fausto Fawcett (BR), Wanlov (Ghana) and has recently released her first musical project (Homa). Her sound works and compositions have been broadcasted in radio stations such as Resonance FM (London), Kunstradio (Vienna) and Rádio Mirabilis (Rio de Janeiro). At Princeton University she wrote her first book Music is What I Make (2012), published in Brazil and awarded by Funarte Prize of Critical Production in Music in 2013.

She has started the renovation of the Fábrica Bhering 2009, a former chocolate factory in the harbour area of Rio de Janeiro that was emptied out and semi-abandoned where now dozens of workspaces, design studios, showrooms and bistros work.

Sol Calero (b. 1982, Venezuela) lives and works in Berlin. Recent solo exhibitions include: Laura Bartlett Gallery, London (2016); Kunsthaus Bregenz (2016); Statements, Art Basel, Laura Bartlett Gallery (2016); David Dale Gallery, Glasgow International (2016); Studio Voltaire, London (2015); Sala Mendoza, Caracas (2015); SALTS, Birsfelden (2015). Recent group exhibitions include: 1857, Oslo (2016); 1646, Den Hague (2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); nGBK, Berlin (2015); and Mostyn, Llandudno (2015). Forthcoming solo exhibitions include Dortmunder Kunstverein (2017), Kunstpalais Erlangen (2017) and Folkestone Triennial (2017). She is co-director of the Berlin project space Kinderhook & Caracas and founder member of Conglomerate TV

Aslı Çavuşoğlu (b. 1982, Turkey) lives and works in Istanbul. She received her BA in Cinema-TV at the Marmara University, Istanbul, TR. Recent solo shows include Red / Red, MATHAF Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha (2016); The Stones Talk, ARTER, Istanbul, (2013); Murder in Three Acts, Delfina Foundation, London (2013). Recent group shows include Manifesta 11, What Do People Do For Money, Zurich (2016); Saltwater, 14th Istanbul Biennial; Surround Audience, New Museum, NYC (2015); The Crime Was Almost Perfect, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2014); Signs Taken in Wonder at MAK Museum in Vienna (2013); Performa 11, NYC (2011).

Vajiko Chachkhiani (b. 1985, Georgia) lives and works in Berlin. He studied Mathematics and Informatics at the Technical University, Tbilisi, before turning to Fine Art, which he studied at Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany, and Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include GRA Glass Pavilion, Amsterdam (2009), Gallery Gala, Tbilisi (2011), BINZ39, Zurich (2012), The State Museum of Literature, Tbilisi (2013), and Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Siegen, Germany (2014). Group shows include Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig (2011), Stedelijk Museum, s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands (2011), Meet Factory, Prague (2012), Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin (2014), Museum of Contemporary Art, Wolfsburg (2014), and Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn (2015). Chachkhiani held a DAAD scholarship (2013), was awarded the prestigious 7th Rubens Promotional Award of the Contemporary Art Museum Siegen (2014), and was accepted for the ISCP Residency Program, New York (2016).

Carla Chaim (b. 1983, Brazil) she lives and works in São Paulo. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions including Os Primeiros Dez Anos, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2010) and Impulse, Reason, Sense, Conflict. Abstract Art from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros collection 

CIFO, Miami, USA (2014). She has participated in several art residencies, among them Arteles, Finland (2013) and The Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada, (2010). Both in her works on paper as well as in her photographs and actions recorded on video, Carla Chaim seeks to go beyond the bounds of the traditional conception of drawing. More than a support for the development of an idea, or an initial sketch of a work to be created, drawing in her work appears essentially as a vestige of a body’s action. 

Christian Falsnaes (b. 1980, Denmark) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Exhibitions of his works includes National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; Manifesta 11, Zurich; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Centre Pompidou, Paris and ZKM, Karlsruhe. In 2015 he was nominated for the Preis der Nationalgalerie.

EJ Hill (born 1985, USA) practices endurance-based performance and incorporates painting, sculpture, and writing to examine the many ways in which physical and ideological bodies may transcend their afflictions. Recent exhibitions include Tenses: Artists in Residence 2015-16, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Bloody Red Sun of Fantastic L.A., PIASA, Paris; and Surface of Color, The Pit, Los Angeles. He is a 2015 recipient of the California Community Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists and was a 2015-16 Artist-in-Residence at The Studio Museum in Harlem. Hill received his BFA from Columbia College Chicago in 2011 and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2013. He lives and works in Los Angeles and New York.

Andy Holden (b.1982, UK) lives and works in Bedford, UK, where his studio is based on a remote farm in a converted pigsty. Recent exhibitions have included an hour-long animation exploring the idea that the world is a cartoon, and a multi-screen film installation revisiting an art movement that he had tried to start as a teenager. As well as making works for galleries Holden’s practice has seen him explore other contexts; such as presenting lectures, making a work for television, releasing records and regularly performing in music venues. He runs the record label Lost Toys Records. 

Li Ran (b. 1986, China) graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Oil Painting Department. He has exhibited extensively internationally including at the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the ICA, London; Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), Houston; The Museum of Moscow, Moscow; CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco; and across China and other venues. He has held solo exhibition at OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT), Xi'an (2015); His works have also been featured in Montreal Biennale (2014), 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), 2nd CAFAM Biennial (2014), 4th "Former West" Project (2013, Berlin), 9th Gwangju Biennial (2012), 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2012). 

Ibrahim Mahama (b. 1987, Ghana) graduated in Painting and Sculpture from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Began work as an artist in 2012 producing Occupations, a series of itinerant installations made in collaboration with migrant communities using industrial materials, including jute fibre sacks used to carry various commodities. His work has been included in a number of group shows including Pangea I and Pangea II at Saatchi Gallery, London and Silence Between the Lines in Ahenema Kokobeng, Kumasi including The Gown Must Go to Town, Accra and the 56. Venice Biennale, All The Words Futures. 

Rebecca Moss (b. 1991, UK) is currently undertaking her MA at the Royal College of Art. She recently took part in the 23 Days at Sea container ship residency, run by Access Gallery, Vancouver. Selected group shows include Test Space, Spike Island (2015), The Tomorrow People, Elevator Gallery (2014) and a film screening at Flat Time House, Peckham (2013). In 2013, she was awarded a Leverhulme Scholarship for a summer school residency and exhibition at Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge. She is interested in the politics of anti-monumental gestures, and references slapstick comedy to tear down heroic figures. She constructs scenarios where she places her body in a landscape to perform, and documents and edits this with video. This often takes the nature of a hapless stunt, game, prank or intervention. She is interested in how awkwardness can invite empathy, and how a fallible, open subject could suggest a resistant position against powerful systems. 

Sasha Pirogova (b. 1986, Russia) graduated from the department of Physics of Moscow State University in 2010. In 2014 graduated from Moscow Rodchenko Art School, Video and New media course. In 2012 she was a prizewinner at the Extra Short Film Festival (ESF). Longlisted for the Kandinsky Prize 2013 in the “Young Artist – Project of the year” category. In 2014 was a winner of the Innovation Prize in “New generation” category. She works with performance as well as video.

Kameelah Janan Rasheed (b. 1985, USA) is an artist, writer, and former public school social studies teacher. Through immersive text-based installations, large-scale public text pieces, publications, sound projects, and discursive programming, her work engages with both figurative and literal language to explore how we narrate the connections between the past, present, and future. Currently, she is an artist in residence at Smack Mellon and on faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York. 

Martine Syms (b. 1988, USA) is an artist based in Los Angeles. She is the founder of Dominica, a publishing imprint dedicated to exploring blackness in visual culture. Her artwork has been exhibited and screened extensively, including presentations at the Hammer Museum Los Angeles; ICA London; New Museum, New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; MCA Chicago; Green Gallery, Milwaukee,

Gene Siskel Film Centre, Chicago; and White Flag Projects, St. Louis. She has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. Syms’ recent solo exhibition Vertical Elevated Oblique was presented at Bridget Donahue Gallery, New York. 

Kemang Wa Lehulere (b. 1984, South Africa) graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand (2011). Solo exhibitions include Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2016); Gasworks, London (2015); Lombard Freid Projects, New York (2013); the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg (2011), and the Association of Visual Arts in Cape Town (2009). Notable group exhibitions include the 8th Berlin Biennale (2014); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2014); The Ungovernables, the second triennial exhibition of the New Museum in New York (2012); the 11th Lyon Biennale at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2011) and at the Kunsthalle Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland (2010). 

Wa Lehulere was a co-founder of the Gugulective (2006), an artist-led collective based in Cape Town, and is a founding member of the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg. He was the winner of the inaugural Spier Contemporary Award in 2007, the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2010, and the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in 2012; he was one of two young artists awarded the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2013, won the first International Tiberius Art Award Dresden in 2014 and was the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Arts in 2015. Wa Lehulere was also the recipient of an Ampersand Foundation residency in New York in 2012. 

Open Group was founded in Lviv in 2012 by five Ukrainian artists. Over the years the structure of the group changed, now it consists of four artists Yuriy Biley (b. 1988. Lives in Wroclaw, Poland), Pavlo Kovach (b. 1987), Stanislav Turina (b. 1988), and Anton Varga (b. 1989. Lives in NY, USA). From time to time the group invites everyone to participate in their projects and to become members of the Open Group. Open Group won the Special prize of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2013 and the Main prize in 2015. Their artwork was presented a