Beijing — Today the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards (CCAA) announced its 2012 recipients. First established by Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China and a prominent collector of contemporary art, the CCAA’s purpose is “to recognize Chinese artists and art critics who show outstanding achievement in artistic creation, as well as in the analysis and critique of art.”
The winners this year are:
Geng Jianyi (耿建翌) — Lifetime Contribution Award (终生成就).
Pak Sheung Chuen (白双全) — Best Artist Award (最佳艺术家).
Yan Xing (鄢醒) — Best Young Artist (最佳年轻艺术家).
The CCAA panel commented at length on Geng Jianyi:
“As a practitioner of Chinese contemporary art for over thirty years, Geng Jianyi has moved beyond the limits of his times in many ways. In a world increasingly subsumed by fashion, speed, short attention spans, the ups and downs of global financial capital and politics — leading to a sense of provisionality and precariousness, of anonymity and plural subjectivity — Geng Jianyi has evoked and subtly verified the fragile potential of the singular subject in a sincere and imaginative manner. This jury wishes to award a unique artist of outstanding artistic achievement.”
Geng Jianyi just had an important retrospective exhibition at Shanghai’s Minsheng Museum. Previous winners of the lifetime contribution award inlcude Zhang Peili (2010), Ai Weiwei (2008), and Huang Yong Ping (2006). Pak Sheung Chuen, winner of the Best Artist award, is the first Hong Kong-based artist to have won a CCAA award. He is probably most recognized for his work in the Hong Kong pavilion of the 2009 Venice Biennale. Yan Xing, the winner of the Best Young Artist award, is a noted performance artist and one of China’s few openly gay artists.
The jury was comprised of Feng Boyi, Huang Zhuan, Li Zhenhua — all noted figures in the Chinese art world — as well as four curators and collectors from abroad: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (artistic director of Kassel Documenta 13), Chris Dercon (Tate Modern), Lars Nittve (M+ Museum), and Uli Sigg (founder of CCAA and collector).
