AwardOctober 1, 2021· By Susana Benko
Eugenio Mendoza Award
The 16th edition of the Eugenio Mendoza Award opened in February of this year at the Sala Mendoza. This event is currently one of the most important in the country due to the quality of the selected works and the projection and impulse it represents for the participating artists.
It arises from a public call, in which Venezuelan and foreign artists residing in the country participate. All of them are under 40 years of age. The selection of the artists has some very particular guidelines that differentiate this contest from other salons: the selection jury -on this occasion made up of four curators (two Venezuelan and two foreigners)- had the mission of analyzing 150 projects received and choosing, each one, only three artists of their preference. In the end, twelve artists were selected.
Thus, Manuel Vásquez-Ortega, Venezuelan architect, curator and lecturer, selected the artists Leonardo Almao, Jesús Briceño and Jonathan Lara; Ileana Ramírez Romero, Venezuelan cultural manager and director of Tráfico Visual, chose José Luis Castro, Ángel D. Leiva and Analy Trejo; Ana Berruguete, Spanish curator and lecturer, selected Zahira Gonzalez, Azalia Licon and Siul Rasse; and Lucas Ospina, Colombian curator, artist and lecturer, selected Rossanna Bermudez, Ana Mosquera, and Armando Rosales.
The jury made up of visual artist and cultural manager Diana López, winner of the seventh edition of the Eugenio Mendoza Award in 1994, editorial designer Ricardo Báez, and philosopher, curator, and researcher Carmen Alicia Di Pasquale, decided to award the First Prize to Ángel D. Leiva, after analyzing the works of these twelve artists. This award consists of an artistic residency at Lugar a Dudas, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Cali in Colombia, which can be seen in a solo exhibition in the main hall of the Sala Mendoza next year.
On the other hand, Analy Trejo was awarded the Emerging Artist Mention by the Spanish Embassy in Venezuela. She will have a three-week residency at PACA, Gijon, Spain, and a solo exhibition at the Sala Mendoza. Ana Mosquera received the Carmen Cordovez Crespo Mention, for which she will prepare a show in the experimental space of the Sala Mendoza. Both also in 2022.
The call for this award was conceived with a plural criterion both in form and content. The proposal has been to think on the social-historical environment and "to re-think -as the press release points out on topics such as the relationship between tradition and contemporaneity, identity and disintegration, structure and collapse, refuge and fragility, reality and utopia." Themes, which remind us "decisively but also playfully, of the imprint of a pandemic and critical context, in its national and global aspect."
Edition #16 of the Eugenio Mendoza Award is part of the celebration of the 65th anniversary of creating this exhibition space in which this hall has given special attention to contemporary artistic practices.
It arises from a public call, in which Venezuelan and foreign artists residing in the country participate. All of them are under 40 years of age. The selection of the artists has some very particular guidelines that differentiate this contest from other salons: the selection jury -on this occasion made up of four curators (two Venezuelan and two foreigners)- had the mission of analyzing 150 projects received and choosing, each one, only three artists of their preference. In the end, twelve artists were selected.
Thus, Manuel Vásquez-Ortega, Venezuelan architect, curator and lecturer, selected the artists Leonardo Almao, Jesús Briceño and Jonathan Lara; Ileana Ramírez Romero, Venezuelan cultural manager and director of Tráfico Visual, chose José Luis Castro, Ángel D. Leiva and Analy Trejo; Ana Berruguete, Spanish curator and lecturer, selected Zahira Gonzalez, Azalia Licon and Siul Rasse; and Lucas Ospina, Colombian curator, artist and lecturer, selected Rossanna Bermudez, Ana Mosquera, and Armando Rosales.
The jury made up of visual artist and cultural manager Diana López, winner of the seventh edition of the Eugenio Mendoza Award in 1994, editorial designer Ricardo Báez, and philosopher, curator, and researcher Carmen Alicia Di Pasquale, decided to award the First Prize to Ángel D. Leiva, after analyzing the works of these twelve artists. This award consists of an artistic residency at Lugar a Dudas, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Cali in Colombia, which can be seen in a solo exhibition in the main hall of the Sala Mendoza next year.
On the other hand, Analy Trejo was awarded the Emerging Artist Mention by the Spanish Embassy in Venezuela. She will have a three-week residency at PACA, Gijon, Spain, and a solo exhibition at the Sala Mendoza. Ana Mosquera received the Carmen Cordovez Crespo Mention, for which she will prepare a show in the experimental space of the Sala Mendoza. Both also in 2022.
The call for this award was conceived with a plural criterion both in form and content. The proposal has been to think on the social-historical environment and "to re-think -as the press release points out on topics such as the relationship between tradition and contemporaneity, identity and disintegration, structure and collapse, refuge and fragility, reality and utopia." Themes, which remind us "decisively but also playfully, of the imprint of a pandemic and critical context, in its national and global aspect."
Edition #16 of the Eugenio Mendoza Award is part of the celebration of the 65th anniversary of creating this exhibition space in which this hall has given special attention to contemporary artistic practices.
