BARCELONA.- The Han Nefkens Foundation - in collaboration with The Museu d’Art Contemporary de Barcelona, MACBA; MUAC, UNAM, Mexico City and The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach - Moving Image Commission 2024 aims to be a tool for increasing contemporary artistic production in the moving image field.

The partnership includes three editions of the Commission, each one will be biennial (starting in 2024) and will have a specific thematic and investigation concept proposed by all the partners. The Commission involves the production of a screen-based video artwork and excludes any type of documentary.

Minia Biabiany will be awarded $100,000 for creating a new work. Biabiany was chosen from a competitive shortlist of three finalists by a distinguished jury comprising the directors and curators of each museum and chaired by Han Nefkens. The Commission is proud to announce that the resulting artwork will be a generous donation from the artist to be co-owned by the participating institutions. Each partner institution will showcase Biabiany’s new work, with the dates to be announced later this year.

The concept for the first edition is Ecology, exploring the increasing urgencies related to the environmental crisis engulfing Planet Earth, amplified by humankind’s unsustainable reliance on the natural habitat. Earth has been pushed to its limits through unbridled exploitation of its natural resources in the name of unrelenting progress over the centuries. This has led to the extreme weather conditions and pollution impacting daily life, contributing to extreme social and economic inequalities. How can humankind come to terms with these conditions and create a path towards an ecological transition that reformulates the relationship between humans and nature?

Art has the unique ability to speak to topics in ways that make it possible to put forth new ways seeing, of understanding, and of imagining possible futures. We welcome proposals that can engage with this broad theme from new and inspiring perspectives that are open to multiple histories, aesthetics, and languages.

Minia Biabiany: “To receive this grant means the possibility to deepen my research weaving artistic and narrative practices, pedagogy and ecology within the Guadeloupean context. I will continue working on building a poetical imagery as a political tool to feed our gaze on ourselves and on our roles within the life cycle. The powerful action of recreating together the meaning of metaphors that think us goes hand-in-hand with the vulnerable act of listening. I express my full gratitude to the jury and the Han Nefkens foundation for its trust in my process and its questions.”

Jury statement: “The jury has selected Minia Biabiany as the winner of the Han Nefkens Foundation, MACBA, MUAC, UNAM and The Bass—Moving Image Commission 2024. The jury recognises in Biabiany's proposal a critical questioning around the urgencies of our time. Her practice, more generally, interweaves research into colonial histories, ecological crisis, cultural violence and language with storytelling. Unanimously, the jury members concur that the aspects above of Biabiany's inquiry, rooted in lived experience and artistic perusal, will converge poetically in a pertinent and timely work.”

Minia Biabiany was selected by a jury that was Chaired by Han Nefkens, founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation and composed of Elvira Dyangani Ose: Director, MACBA, Hiuwai Chu: Head of Exhibitions and Curator, MACBA, Amanda de la Garza: Director, MUAC, UNAM, Virginia Roy: Curator, MUAC, UNAM, James Voorhies: Chief Curator, The Bass Miami Beach in the presence of Hilde Teerlinck: Director, Han Nefkens Foundation and Alessandra Biscaro: Coordinator, Han Nefkens Foundation.

The Foundation and the institutions are grateful to the invaluable support of an international panel of experts, including Zoe Butt, Solange Farkas, Cédric Fauq, Stefanie Hessler, Lisa Long, Julia Morandeira, Tendai Mutambu, Pablo José Ramírez, Övül Ö. Durmusoglu, who nominated an initial long-list of 18 candidates.

The selected finalists were Adrián Balseca Carrillo (1989, Ecuador), Minia Biabiany (1988, Guadalupe) and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz (1972, Puerto Rico).