BELFAST.- The second edition of MAC International has launched in Belfast. This project is the MAC’s biennial open submission exhibition, presenting a snapshot of some of the most urgent voices in contemporary practice operating in our world today.

Spanning all three gallery spaces in the building, MAC International provides a truly global perspective on contemporary art. The artworks displayed take many forms, including photography, film, installation, sculpture and painting. Indeed, many push the boundaries of particular media or disciplines; reconfiguring, merging or deconstructing them and, in doing so, broaden our understanding of what art can be in 2016. There are also a number of common themes in this year’s project. Concepts of nationhood, borders, territory and belonging and investigations into civic, social, political and psychological space pervade throughout.

One of the 18 artists featured in the project, deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to the exhibition, has been awarded the prestigious MAC International Ulster Bank Prize of 20,000 GBP. This is the largest art prize in Ireland and one of the few major art prizes in the UK.

For 2016, the MAC International Ulster Bank Prize was awarded to Slovenian artist Jasmina Cibic.

Her work titled Tear Down and Rebuild is the final chapter of a larger, three-chapter body of work called Spielraum, which comprises film, performance and installation works. Spielraum addresses the key elements in the creation of patriotic spectacle and investigates their re-purposing when ideology and the state that sponsored them collapse. This third and final section of the project is specifically concerned with the death of such structures. The script of Tear Down and Rebuild is composed of various quotes culled from political speeches, debates and proclamations, that muse upon the iconoclasm of architecture, art and monuments. The film itself focuses around the conversation of four characters: a Nation Builder, a Pragmatist, a Conservationist and an Artist/Architect.

The MAC International jury for 2016 comprised of Marta Dziewańska, curator and writer based in Warsaw; Katerina Gregos, art historian, curator and writer based in Brussels; and Hugh Mulholland, Senior Curator at the MAC.

The shortlisted artists on display in the exhibition are: Jasmina Cibic / Ismar Cirkinagic / Teresa Cos / Angel de la Rubia / Wojtek Doroszuk / Mariah Garnett / Joy Gerrard / Núria Güell / Halloubi Hamza / Darren Harvey-Regan / Frederic Huska / Rósa Sigrún Jónsdóttir / Ana Mendes / Tom Molloy / Henrique Neves / Beto Shwafaty / Emma Talbot / Nikolas Ventourakis