Terike Haapoja is the first Finnish Artist to win the ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art
Media release 29.10.2016
The winner of ANTI Festival International Prize for Live Art 2016 was announced on Saturday 29th October 2016 at ANTI Prize Weekend. For the first time, the Prize was awarded to a Finnish artist,
Terike Haapoja!
The artist was presented with 30,000 euros, making the prize one of Finland’s greatest cultural awards. The Prize is one of its kind in the world and underlines the importance of the form of live art. The winner of the Prize was chosen by a three member jury chaired by Eva Neklyaeva (FI/BY), the Artistic Director of the Italian Santarcangelo festival, who was accompanied by Theatre Director, Artist Professor Mikko Roiha (FI) and Heike Roms (UK/DE), the Professor of Performance Studies at Aberystwyth University.
When announcing the winning artist at the evening ceremony the chair of jury, Eva Neklyaeva said:
“At its heart her work is fascinated with how we perceive and apprehend and – perhaps more importantly – how we are perceived; how does the non-human feel our human presence – the animal, the mineral, the light and the life of the world, what is the real nature and impact of our footprint, our mark, our own signs of life. We know this one of the fundamental questions, one of the fundamental problems, of our age.”
Terike Haapoja receives a cash prize of 15,000 euros and the same amount in the form of a production grant for bringing a new work to the ANTI Festival in 2017. The prize is funded by the Saastamoinen Foundation.
Terike Haapoja (FI)
Terike Haapoja is a Finnish visual artist based New York. Haapoja’s political interventions, large scale installation work and writing investigate the mechanics of othering with a specific focus on issues arising from the anthropocentric world view of western modernism.
Haapoja’s utopian societal institutions, such as Party of Others (2011–) or the collaboration with writer Laura Gustafsson, History of Others (2012 – ongoing), activate the world around them, bringing structures of exclusion and inclusion into light. In recent projects Haapoja has approached law as a performative space where reality is constructed.
The Prize nominees and more information about the Prize:
ANTI Festival Manager Elisa Itkonen, elisa@antifestival.com, +358 50 305 2005
