From more than 270 nominations, a shortlist of ten artists have been selected to exhibit in the Jameel Prize 3, a £25,000 award for works directly inspired by sources rooted in the Islamic tradition.
The biennial award was conceived following the renovation of the V&A’s Jameel Gallery of Islamic Art in 2006. Previous winners are Afruz Amighi (2009) for her work 1001 Pages, an intricate hand-cut screen made from the woven plastic used to construct refugee tents, and Rachid Koraïchi for his work Les Maitres Invisibles. This year’s exhibition, which takes place at the V&A, London, in December, includes artists from Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and India for the first time.
This year’s judges include Thomas Heatherwick, designer and founder of Heatherwick Studio; Rashid Koraïchi, artist and winner of the Jameel Prize 2011; Martin Roth, V&A Director and Nada Shabout, Associate Professor of Art History and the Director of the Contemporary Arab and Muslim Cultural Studies Institute (CAMCSI) at the University of North Texas, USA.
Among those shortlisted, Faig Ahmed will exhibit two works that employ Azerbaijani rug making techniques. Ahmed disassembles traditional rugs and randomly rearranges their structures, often combining the fragments within contemporary sculptural forms, in an attempt to make the rugs more suitable for modern life.
Mounir Fatmi will show a video work entitled Modern Times: A History of the Machine (2010-12), which references traditional Arabic calligraphy to explore how ‘unrelenting’ construction, economic might and the European legacy have impacted the Middle East.
Waqas Khan will exhibit two works that challenge the traditions of miniature painting. Tranquil Pool (2012) and Dance in Retina II (2012) were produced while the artist was in a trance-like state – the scaled-up miniature drawings employ dots, marks and lines to express a visual infinity.
Also shortlisted for this year’s prize are Nada Debs, Rahul Jain, Dice Kayek, Laurent Mareschal, Nasser Al Salem, Florie Salnot and Pascal Zoghbi.
Jameel Prize 3, V&A London, 11 December – 21 April 2014. The winner will be announced at the V&A on 10 December 2013. For more information and videos of all shortlisted artists see www.vam.ac.uk
