Shortlist 2017

TANIA EL KHOURY (LB)

Tania El Khoury is a feminist Arab live artist based in London and Beirut, whose work aims at engaging with the politics of space, the ethics of the encounter with audience, and the writing of history from below.

Tania’s work has been shown across five continents, in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She has been nominated for a number of prizes and is the recipient of the Total Theatre Innovation and the Arches Brick awards.

Tania is currently working on a practice-based PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research and publications focus on interactive Live Art after the Arab uprisings. Tania is associated with Forest Fringe and is co-founder of Dictaphone Group, an urban research and site-specific performance collective in her native Beirut. READ MORE

SETHEMBILE MSEZANE (ZA)

Msezane (South Africa) maps out how the process of commemorative practice informs constructs of history, mythmaking, and ultimately addresses the absence of the black female body in public spaces and sculpture.In 2015 she performed at the removal of the John Cecil Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town (left). Selected group shows include Women’s Work and The Art of Disruptions at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2016), Dis(colour)ed Margins at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (2017), Re[as]sisting Narratives at Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2016), plus a recent solo show at Johannesburg’s Gallery MOMO, titled Kwasuka Sukela. READ MORE

ALEXANDRA PIRICI (RO)

A Romanian artist with a background in choreography, Pirici works in different mediums,
from performance to visual arts to music.

Her works have been exhibited at the Venice Biennale (Romanian Pavilion for the 55th edition of the Bienniale, together with Manuel Pelmus), Tate Modern, 9th Berlin Biennale, Manifesta 10, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, the 12th Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, the Van Abbemuseum, Hebbel am Ufer Berlin and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. She received the Excellence Award from the National Dance Center in Bucharest in 2015.

This year sees Alexandra participating in the decennial international art exhibition Skulptur Projekte Münster.

THE VACUUM CLEANER (UK)

Working across art forms including performance, installation and film, the vacuum cleaner addresses issues such as consumerism and mental health. From-one man shows to large-scale participatory events, his approach is both subtle and extreme, but always candid, provocative and playful.

The vacuum cleaner’s work has been exhibited throughout the UK, with recent major commissions including the Wellcome Collection, Broadmoor Hospital and FACT. Internationally, he has shown at  Festspiele /Gessnerallee (Zurich) and Vooruit/Dr Guislain Hospital Museum (Ghent). Vacuum cleaner’s films have been commissioned by BBC4 and Channel 4. He was a Tate Modern/Britain Artist in Residence 2016/17 and is an Artsadmin Artist. READ MORE