Brian Fuata is the 2020 Winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Media release 31.10.2020
Brian Fuata was announced as the 2020 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art on Saturday 31st October. Fuata was revealed as the 7th winner of the prestigious prize during the ANTI Prize Party in Kuopio, Finland.
The 2020 shortlist comprised of four celebrated artists/ collectives from across the globe: Geumhyung Jeong (South Korea), W A U H A U S (Finland), Ingri Fiksdal (Norway) and Brian Fuata (Australia).
The prize, at €30,000, is one of the richest in the arts. ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is the world’s only international prize dedicated to live art. The prize is funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation.
The phenomenal live works of the shortlisted artists were presented in the Shortlist LIVE! Programme, supported by The Kone Foundation, through a mix of live, digital and remote showings during the 2020 ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival.
The 2020 Chair of Jury is Artist, pioneer in live art, Kira O’Reilly (Ireland/Finland), and the other members are Curator João Laia (Portugal/Finland) and Programming Director Fiona Winning (Australia).
The jury considered the nominees’ work from the past few years through documentation – and experienced their recent works in the Shortlist LIVE! Programme together with other audiences. In addition, the jury had personal meetings with each of the artists. The decision on the winner was made after these processes.
The Jury states of the Winner:
Brian locates his genealogy, his geography within the colonial fiction of Australia and the Pacific, and his practice in the context of contemporary performance, visual and live art. The merging of his physicality, his musicality of language and playful associative subject matter is brimming with relevance to the contemporary moment.
From care during the pandemic, to being a queer Samoan Australian in the contemporary art world, and from the women in his artistic milieu to the Black Lives Matter movement. He embodies apparitions, ghosts in our culture – that call up the unspeakable and the wondrous. His performance is delicate and agile – alive with criticality, generosity, energy and love.
Brian Fuata (AU)
Brian Fuata works in the improvisation of performance and objects employing the image of the ghost as a structural device. His live works are in situ timed pieces that vary in period blocks. They integrate multiple genres and registers of performance and public speaking, to engage a new narrative that he makes in/of each site incorporating his material surrounds as potential subject matter.
Fuata won a 15 000€ cash prize and in addition a production support of the same amount to bring a new piece to ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival 2021.
More information & Interview requests
Media photos: antifestival.com/media
Elisa Itkonen
elisa@antifestival.com
+358 50 305 2005