LONDON.- Frieze Art Fair announces that the winner of the Emdash Award 2011 is the video and performance artist Anahita Razmi, who is based in Stuttgart. Razmi’s previous works have dealt with issues concerning identity and gender, employing objects with a national and cultural significance or citing the work of high-profile female artists. Her winning proposal combines both of these features of her work and was selected from over 550 applications by artists from all over the world. The shortlist included entries from Australia, Costa Rica, Croatia, France, Germany, India, Israel, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and the USA.
For Frieze Art Fair 2011, sponsored for the eighth year by Deutsche Bank, Razmi will present a new commission that intends to draw attention to how Tehran's skyline was recently used by protestors after the Iranian presidential election. She will use choreographer Trisha Brown’s 1971 work Roof Piece, which took place on 12 different rooftops over a ten-block area in downtown New York, as its point of departure. The work will be presented as a video installation at Frieze Art Fair.
The Emdash Award allows an emerging artist based outside the UK to realise a major project at Frieze Art Fair as part of the critically acclaimed Frieze Projects programme. Sarah McCrory, curator of Frieze Projects, commenting on the announcement said: ‘Anahita Razmi's unique proposal references a seminal work by Trisha Brown, a work which is 40 years old this year. Razmi's recontextualisation adds a new dimension to the piece which is at once provocative, insightful and timely.’
The Emdash Award is supported by the Emdash Foundation, a private foundation with a mission to support new ideas and emerging talent across disciplines, from the arts and cultural projects to science. Andrea Dibelius, Founder of Emdash said: ‘Emdash is delighted that the selection panel has named Anahita Razmi as the winner of the 2011 Emdash Award. Her proposal was selected from amongst 579 applications of highest quality. Razmi's art embodies the principles of the Foundation in an exemplary way: thought provoking, supporting new ideas, and allowing for reflection, while focusing on a very topical issue of our times.’
In 2011, Gasworks, London’s outstanding complex of artists’ studios, will once again host the award’s residency.
Razmi studied at Akademie für Bildende Künste, Stuttgart; Pratt Institute, New York; and Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. Selected shows and projects from 2011 include: Videonale 13, Kunstmuseum Bonn; ‘Division by Zero’, Carbon12, Dubai; ‘Make - Believe -Remake’, Kunstverein Friedrichshafen.
