LAWRENCE ABU HAMDAN WINS 2016 NAM JUNE PAIK AWARD

Germany’s Museum Folkwang in Essen announced today that Lawrence Abu Hamdan has won the 2016 Nam June Paik Award. The $27,000 prize is presented by the Nam June Paik Foundation biennially.

Selected for his work Earshot, 2016, the Beirut-based artist often explores the intersection of sound and politics. The installation was inspired by Abu Hamdan’s investigation into the deaths of two teenagers, Nadeem Nawara and Mohamad Abu Daher, who were shot in the West Bank in 2014. After an audio-ballistic analysis of the recorded gunshots, he determined that Israeli soldiers attempted to cover up their role in killing the two boys by trying to mask the live rounds they fired. Solo exhibitions of Abu Hamdan’s work have been held at Portikus in Frankfurt, Kunsthalle St Gallen in Switzerland, and the Van AbbeMuseum in the Netherlands. He has also exhibited at the Shanghai Biennial, Whitechapel Gallery in London, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, and Tate Modern.

The jury consisted of artist Dara Birnbaum; Penelope Curtis, director of Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon; Joanna Mytkowska, director of the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw; Rolf Quaghebeur, director of Argos Centrum voor Kunst en Media, Brussels; and artist Akram Zaatari. In a statement, the jury said: “In his installation he has created an open space in which we can focus with precision on his subject, its means of representation, and on our own role as viewers. The topic of the representation of violence is of great contemporary relevance, and the artist encourages us to debate key moral issues in a different way.”

Works by the short-listed nominees, Trisha Baga, Neïl Beloufa, and Katja Novitskova, will be exhibited at the museum from October 28, 2016, to January 8, 2017.