Katharina Fritsch and Cecilia Vicuña Awarded Venice Biennale’s Golden Lions
German sculptor Katharina Fritsch and Chilean activist, poet, and multivalent artist Cecilia Vicuña have gained the Fifty-Ninth Venice Biennale’s Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement. The distinguished award is given to mid- or late-career artists in recognition of their efforts and contributions to the art-historical canon. That is the primary 12 months since 2013 that two artists have acquired the prize; that each are feminine displays this 12 months’s focus of the Biennale, which is on the work of ladies and gender-nonconforming artists.
Fritsch, who divides her time between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal, is understood for her large-scale, brightly hued sculptures of people, animals, and objects that disorient and shock. One of the crucial distinguished of those is Hahn/Cock, 2013, a fourteen-foot-tall cobalt-blue rooster initially created for the Fourth Plinth fee in London’s Trafalgar Sq. and now within the assortment of the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in Washington, DC . “Fritsch’s contribution to the sector of up to date artwork, particularly sculpture, has been incomparable.” stated Biennale curator Cecilia Alemani in a press release, noting that for her, the artist’s works impressed a “sense of awe and dizzying attraction.” “It appears like one is taking a look at monuments from an alien civilization, or artefacts on show in an odd posthuman museum.”
Born and raised in Santiago, Vicuña was exiled within the early Seventies following the violent army coup in opposition to President Salvador Allende. Now dwelling in New York Vicuña is understood for works with roots in poetry and knowledgeable by the Indigenous tradition of her native Chile. Her follow encompasses quipus, strands of knotted fibers that reference the traditional Andean communication system; “precarios,” objects comprised of discarded supplies and exuding a way of impermanence; movie; collective efficiency, and installations. “Vicuña has travelled her personal path, doggedly, humbly, and meticulously, anticipating many current ecological and feminist debates and envisioning new private and collective mythologies,” stated Alemani.
Each Fritsch and Vicuña are taking part within the Biennale’s primary exhibition, titled “The Milk of Goals.” The Biennale opens April 23 and runs by November 27.