ZURICH.- The art organization KADIST and Kunsthalle Zürich announced Shirin Yousefi as this year’s recipient of the jointly launched award.

The «KADIST– Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award»amounts to 10'000 Euro, which will go towards the production of Shirin Yousefi’s artwork The tales of the cortex. Yousefi’s work aims to present the non-visible events of evidence of in- and exclusion connected to borders. Working with recordings of ululation and dispersion of odor, Yousefi draws attention to paradoxically invisible and palpable barriers around areas and outlines of specific regions. Sound and odor are mobile and fluid. Both appear, linger, resonate, volatilize but at the same time deposit themselves under the surface, pollute and betray. Hence, they represent two important elements: firstly the shape of geopolitical spaces, and secondly the passing through them. Furthermore, both of them can help where the darkness and the lack of visual elements prevent a proper analysis of what is local, only to be lost again once it has been established.

Shirin Yousefi will present the artwork as part of the group exhibition Speak, Lokal at Kunsthalle Zürich, from March 4 to May 7, 2017. This group exhibition includes works by artists from four continents, and focuses on how artists all over the world investigate and broach local conditions.

Aimed at enabling young artists in Switzerland to realize a new project within the institutional context, the «KADIST – Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award» is designed to lend support to artists at the beginning of their career.

Shirin Yousefi (*1986 in Tehran, Iran) holds a Bachelor in Dramatic Arts from Tehran University, Iran, and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from ECAL, Lausanne. She is currently enrolled in a Master program at ECAL, Lausanne. The artist, who is based in Servion, Vaud, has shown in group exhibitions such as Shadow , Reunion, Zurich, 7 Raumthesen , Rotwand Galerie, Zurich, and Blancheur , ECAL, Lausanne, among others.

The 2017 shortlist for the «KADIST – Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award» consists of the following four artists and projects:

• Marc Asekhame and Teo Schifferli, both Zurich, with their proposal Magazin Periodico, nominated

• Maya Minder, Zurich, with her proposal Gasthaus – Fermentation and Bacteria , nominated

• Gian-Andri Töndury, Bern, with his proposal Nur der leere Himmel w eiss es besser (als ich), nominated

• Shirin Yousefi, Servion, with her proposal The tales of the cortex, awarded

The nominators and jurors of «KADIST – Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award» 2017: Emilie Villez, Director KADIST – Paris Daniel Baumann, Kunsthalle Zürich Bea Schlingenhoff, Artist Fredi Fischli & Niels Olsen, Co-Directors of gta Exhibitions at ETH Zürich Daniel Morgenthaler, Helmhaus Zürich

This is the 5th time the «KADIST – Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award» has been awarded.