Anri Sala wins prestigious Vincent Award in Netherlands

TIRANA, Nov. 27 – French-Albanian artist Anri Sala has been announced the winner of high-profile European contemporary art prize Vincent Award 2014 in the Netherlands.
Benno Tempel, the chairman of the international jury, said Anri Sala succeeded best in creating an installation where the viewer is constantly challenged by image, sound and movement.
“It is a poetic and at the same time conceptual work. He presents the idea of gone ideologies and the possibilities this creates for the future on an individual level.”
Anri Sala will receive euro 50,000 in prize money, to be used as he sees fit, festival organizers said in a statement.
The work he created for the Vincent Award 2014 exhibition will remain on show at The Hague’s GEM Museum of Contemporary Art until 1 February 2015. Elsewhere, his work is currently on show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.
Anri Sala, 40, is interested in turning points in history: moments that upset the status quo and produce a new order. He sees such moments as providing the scope for new opportunities. Sala’s early works refer to his personal experience of social and political change in Albania following the collapse of the Communist regime in 1991. History, memory and change continue to be recurrent themes in his more recent work. Sala works mainly with film and video.
For the Vincent Award 2014, Sala combined three works to create a single installation. His films ‘Le Clash’ and ‘Tlatelolco Clash’ transport the viewer to a derelict Modernist arts venue and to spots in the vicinity of the Plaza of Three Cultures in Tlatelolco (Mexico City) – places he sees as symbolizing the failure of a ‘Great Ideology’.
These images are accompanied by various renditions of punk band The Clash’s renowned ‘Should I stay or should I go?’ track. In ‘Le Clash’, the song becomes a flowing melody played alternately on a barrel organ and a music box, whereas in ‘Tlatelolco Clash’ it reappears in fragmentary form as different players insert separate sheets of perforated music into a barrel organ. Each player cranks the barrel organ at his own rhythm and speed, creating varying interpretations of the tune. The two films are linked by a third work called ‘Doldrum’ (a reference to the windless area of the Atlantic known as the Doldrums, where sailing ships could be becalmed for days or weeks at a time). In this work, a drum plays automatically in response to inaudible, low-frequency sounds on the soundtracks of the films.
The shortlist for the Vincent Award 2014 comprised Pierre Huyghe (France), Manfred Pernice (Germany), Willem de Rooij (Netherlands), Anri Sala (Albania/ France) and Gillian Wearing (United Kingdom).
The Vincent Award was launched by the Broere Foundation in 2000 in memory of Monique Zajfen, a beloved friend of the Broere family and former holder of Galerie 121 in Antwerp. The Vincent Award is intended both to encourage European talent and to promote communication in a free, united and peaceful Europe.
The Vincent Award is one of Europe’s foremost contemporary art prizes, second only to the UK’s Turner Prize.