AMSTERDAM.- Eye Filmmuseum announced Kahlil Joseph as the winner of the Eye & Art Prize 2020

In collaboration between Eye Filmmuseum and the Paddy & Joan Leigh Fermor Arts Fund since 2015, the Eye Art & Film Prize aims to support an artist or filmmaker whose work has contributed in an extraordinary way to new developments at the interface between visual art and film. With the Eye Art & Film Prize of £25,000, Kahlil Joseph can create new work.

Jury chair Sandra den Hamer, director of Eye Filmmuseum: “Artist Kahlil Joseph makes overwhelming work about the experience that blurs the boundaries between cinema, visual arts and music. His work focuses on the experience of African Americans in the United States. He presents his political commentary in an elegant, almost alluring way, in beautiful, carefully arranged installations with a unique visual style.”

Den Hamer was on the jury with filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul, artist Aernout Mik, curators Andrea Lissoni (Tate Modern), Olivia Stewart (PJLF Arts Fund) and Solange Farkas (Associação Cultural Videobrasil).

Winner of the 2020 Eye Art & Film Prize, Kahlil Joseph (1981, Seattle) is an American artist and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, who is best known for his groundbreaking video clips for musicians such as Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, FKA twigs and Beyoncé. Since 2015, he is also known for his large-scale video installations on the interface between cinema, visual arts, fashion and pop music.

In 2015, Joseph had his first museum presentation at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles. A year later, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles dedicated a small solo exhibition to his work, followed by a presentation at the New Museum in New York in 2017. In the same year, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht dedicated a large solo exhibition to his work.

Joseph is currently the Artistic Director of The Underground Museum, a groundbreaking independent art museum, exhibition space, and community hub in Los Angeles founded by his deceased brother, visionary artist and curator, Noah Davis.

Jury Report
The work of LA-based artist Kahlil Joseph centres on the experience of Africa-Americans in the United States. His political comments are addressed elegantly - almost seductively - in beautiful, precise installations that show a unique visual approach.

The jury is very impressed by Joseph’s hybrid practice that crosses cinema, visual art and music. He disturbs the boundaries between art forms by using a sophisticated visual style through which he explores and shows black culture in the United States. A vibrant mixture of fiction and reality, sound and image in an ongoing transformation. For example, in his recent work BLKNWS shown at this year's Venice Biennale; a fierce, original newscast in the form of a two-channel video montage that uses media clips, music videos, archival material and newly shot images. It is an ongoing work that mixes current and historical news about black culture with juxtaposing images, hung side by side. Here the artist explores the way black lives are perceived in an installation that blurs the lines between art, journalism and cultural critique.