The VIA Art Fund and the World Frontiers Forum announced that Tavares Strachan has been selected as the recipient of the 2018 Frontier Art Prize, an annual $100,000 award dedicated to honoring a visual artist whose practice reflects a pioneering spirit and whose work addresses global challenges. “The Frontier Art Prize continues to be an experimental project, one that aims to make direct and impactful connections between art and our future,” Bridgitt Evans, the founder of the VIA Art Fund, said in a statement.

Born in the Bahamas in 1979, Strachan examines the intersection of art, science, and the environment through his interdisciplinary practice. Over the past year, he has taken part in the World Frontiers Forum Convergence Project, which brought together scientists, medical and bio-tech professionals, and social entrepreneurs, as well as other global thought leaders, to work with the government of Sierra Leone to improve access to food, health care, educational opportunities, and economic mobility. Strachan’s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions, including the first-ever Bahamian national pavilion at the Fifty-Fifth Venice Biennale.

Commenting on his practice, Evans said: “Strachan’s work exhibits curiosity and wanderlust, inquiry and rigor, and openness, empathy and inclusion. He pushes the boundaries of his media and subject matter and asks us to push our boundaries of what we believe and know about ourselves, our bodies, our communities, and the world.”

This year’s Frontier Art Prize jury comprised cochairs David Edwards of Le Laboratoire and Bridgitt Evans of the VIA Art Fund, and panel members Hans Ulrich Obrist of Serpentine Galleries, Evelyn Hankins of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Laurent Le Bon of the Picasso Museum, Jennifer Flay of FIAC, and JD Talasek of the National Academy of Sciences. The winner of the inaugural Frontier Art Prize, awarded last year, was artist Doug Aitken.