BARCELONA.- Rosa Maria Malet, director of Fundació Joan Miró and Elisa Durán, General Director of ”la Caixa” Foundation, have announced the winner of the 2017 Joan Miró Prize. The winner of the sixth edition of the prize, which is awarded every two years, is Kader Attia. Past recipients include Olafur Eliasson, Pipilotti Rist, Mona Hatoum, Roni Horn, and Ignasi Aballí.

The 2017 Joan Miró Prize jury was composed of Iwona Blazwick, director of Whitechapel Gallery (London), Magnus af Petersens, director of Bonniers Konsthall (Stockholm), Alfred Pacquement, former director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Nimfa Bisbe, Head of the ”la Caixa” Foundation contemporary art collection, and Rosa Maria Malet, director of Fundació Joan Miró (Barcelona). The jury members, all acclaimed professionals in the field of modern and contemporary art, chose among a pool of possible candidates with outstanding, innovative careers based on creative freedom akin to the work and spirit of Joan Miró.

Specifically, in its statement, the jury members lauded “Attia’s passionate engagement with current affairs and with the shared fate of humanity [which] has close links to Joan Miró’s involvement in the critical episodes that marked his generation, while Attia’s unique take on complex, often traumatic, human relationships across cultures resonates with Miró’s universal aspirations.” The jury also highlighted the breadth of his artistic research, especially with regard to the lingering effects of colonialism, as well as his encyclopedic, yet nuanced elaboration of the notion of repair.

Kader Attia (Dugny, 1970) grew up straddling East and West, between his parents’ Algiers and his own native France. As a young man, he lived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Venezuela, and the city of Barcelona. These experiences both imbued his work with an unmistakable intercultural approach and sparked a particular interest in exploring the aftermath of colonialism and the notion of repair. He currently divides his time between Berlin and Algiers, where he produces multidisciplinary art spanning a wide range of techniques, materials, symbols and subjects. Attia studied at the École Supérieure des Arts Appliqués Duperré and the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, in Paris, and Escola Massana, Centre d'Art i Disseny in Barcelona. His work has been featured at such leading international institutions as Whitechapel Gallery (London), Tate Modern (London), Centre Pompidou (Paris), MoMA (New York), the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (Sydney), the KW Institute for Contemporary Art (Berlin), and the Museum für Moderne Kunst (Frankfurt), among others. He has also participated in multiple biennales, including the 11th Cairo Biennale; the 5th and 6th Marrakech Biennales; dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel; and the 50th and 57th Venice Biennales, the latter open to the public until November 26, 2017. He is the recipient of the 2008 Biennale Prize from the Cairo Biennale, the 2010 Abraaj Capital Art Prize, and the 2016 Marcel Duchamp Prize.

As the winner of the 2017 Joan Miró Prize, in addition to receiving a cash prize of €70,000, Mr. Attia will have a 2018 solo show at Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona produced by "la Caixa" Foundation. He will also receive a trophy designed by the renowned Barcelonabased designer André Ricard, who drew inspiration from the spirit and identity of both Joan Miró and the Fundació. The trophy seeks to reflect the desire to innovate and the dynamic nature of the prize and the artist it was named for.