Sonya Lindfors is the 2018 Winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Media release 29.9.2018
Finnish artist Sonya Lindfors was announced as the 2018 winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art on Saturday 29th September. Lindfors was revealed as the 5th winner of the prestigious prize by a short film simultaneously published online and screened during the ANTI Prize Party in Kuopio, Finland.
The prize, at €30,000, is one of the richest in the arts, and is awarded annually to an artist or artist collective. ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is the world’s first prize dedicated to live art.
The 2018 shortlist comprised Lindfors and three internationally celebrated artists from across the globe; All The Queens Men (Australia), Nic Green (United Kingdom) and Jeanne van Heeswijk (Netherlands). Their work shares an urgent fascination with the questions of our time, essaying ideas of inclusion, equality, community, diversity, feminism, power, blackness.
The 2018 jury was chaired by Jacques Rancière (France), one of the most significant and influential philosophers of our time. The jury is completed by renowned performer and choreographer Eisa Jocson (Philippines) and Lois Keidan (United Kingdom), co-founder of the London Live Art Development Agency.
The Jury states of the winner:
“Her practice is of vital importance to its immediate contexts and Lindfors works to allow others to work, to create spaces of exchange and dialogue where previously they were missing. Her contribution to arts and culture is quickly becoming essential, foundational to the sets of social discourses around equality, diversity, gender, and sexuality that are reshaping our world.”
Read the full jury statement on our website.
Sonya Lindfors receives a cash prize of €15,000 and the same amount in the form of a production grant for bringing a new work to the ANTI Festival 2019.
Sonya Lindfors (FI)
Sonya Lindfors is a Helsinki based Finnish artist who works with choreography, facilitating, community organizing and education. She is the founding member and Artistic Director of UrbanApa, an inter-disciplinary and counter hegemonic arts community that offers a platform for new discourses and feminist art practices.
In her work, Lindfors deals with issues of power, structures, representation and othering. Her recent series of stage works; NOIR? (2013), NOBLE SAVAGE (2016) and COSMIC LATTE (2018), centralizes questions around blackness, black body politics, race and representation.
Lindfors is interested in creating and facilitating anti-racist and feminist platforms, where a festival, performance, publication or workshop can operate as the site of radical collective dreaming.
More information
on our website and Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival, +358 50 305 2005.
The short film: vimeo.com
Press photos: antifestival.com/media
ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art is organised by ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival and supported by Saastamoinen Foundation.
