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Amar Kanwar: 2014 Recipient of the Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change

Date uploaded: June 16, 2014

Creative Time has announced that New Delhi-based artist Amar Kanwar has been selected as the winner of the 2014 Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change. Supported by Creative Time board member Elizabeth K. Sorensen, the prestigious annual prize is given to artists whose work, like that of Kanwar’s, provokes awareness of and engagement with critical issues of our time, working to advance the causes of equity and justice. The annual award goes to artists whose work engages with critical social issues and carries an award of 25,000 USD.

Mr. Kanwar, who creates complex films on critical socio-political issues, will use his prize earnings to advance his latest project. Titled The Sovereign Forest, the work comprises a constellation of moving and still images, texts, books, pamphlets, albums, music, objects, seeds, events, and processes, brought together in an ambitious attempt to reopen discussion and initiate a creative response to our understanding of crime, politics, human rights, and ecology. Creative Time will share the results of his work in 2015.

Mr. Kanwar was selected from a pool of over 250 artists, as Creative Time opened the nomination process to recommendations from the public for the first time since its inception in 2009. He will officially receive the Prize on November 15 at the 2014 Creative Time Summit: Stockholm, an annual conference on art and social change. This year’s Summit, in its first iteration outside of New York City, will be held in Stockholm, Sweden. Presented in partnership with Public Art Agency Sweden (PAAS), and co-curated by Creative Time Chief Curator Nato Thompson and Director of PAAS Magdalena Malm. Summit: Stockholm will address the challenges posed by migration, the growth of nationalism and homophobia, and the changing uses of the public sphere. It will take place on November 14 and 15 at Stockholm’s Kulturhuset.

This new partnership between Creative Time and The Annenberg Retreat at Sunnylands will enable Kanwar to convene a select group of thought leaders, policy experts, activists, and others prior to the Summit for a discussion of the issues at the heart of his work and to develop actionable steps and achieve specific outcomes. The artist and other discussion participants will then engage in a dialogue on the Summit stage, sharing the content and results of their meeting.

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Image courtesy of the artist.

Image courtesy of the artist.