The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award
Leonardo/ISAST is pleased to announce that the First Leonardo
Global Crossings Prize has been awarded to Abdel Ghany Kenawy and
Amal Kenawy, of Cairo, Egypt, a brother-sister team who have been
collaborating on large-scale installations since 1997. These
works, whether tower-like structures containing glass balls rising
up towards the ceiling or tunnels leading to a block of frozen ice
in a room surrounded by chiffon, demonstrate that there is no
"natural" barrier between the worlds of art and science.
The Kewanys' unique collaboration is built partially upon Abdel
Ghany's background in the physical sciences and Amal's background
in filmmaking, yet their individual efforts cannot be so neatly
defined as singularly "scientific" or "artistic." Committed to
their creative processes, they work very closely together on every
aspect of their projects from conceptualization and structural
design to production and execution in their workshop.
Characteristic of all their projects is the power of texture and
image, and sensorial play with surfaces between spaces (loosening
up the inside/outside polarity)–whether it is a "textured" video,
the texture of light projected on a triple screen of chiffon, the
texture of human hair bows on a pair of wax legs in a display
case, or the textures (acoustic and visual) of a beating heart on
which a pair of lace gloved hands is sewing a white rose applique.
For examples of their work see
<http://www.thetownhousegallery.com/html/artists/amal_abdelghany_kenawy.htm=
>.
The three runners-up for the 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award
are Regina Celia Pinto (Brazil—web-based and CD-ROM art), Kim
Machan (Australia—curator, arts producer and consultant) and
Shilpa Gupta (India—Internet, video and installation works).
Other nominees for the 2005 award included: Andres Burbano
(Colombia), Kibook (collaborative team of Visieu Lac
[Vietnamese-Australian], Mark Wu [British-born Chinese] and Stefan
Woelwer [Germany]), Nalini Malani (India) and Hellen Sky
(Australia).
The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award, funded in part by the
Rockefeller Foundation, was juried by an international panel of
experts co-chaired by Nisar Keshvani (Singapore) and Rejane Spitz
(Brazil). The award recognizes the contribution of artists and
scholars from culturally diverse communities worldwide within the
emerging art-science-technology field. The award is part of the
Leonardo Global Crossings Special Project, supported by the Ford
Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.
For additional information about the Leonardo Global Crossings
Award, please visit <http://leonardo.info/isast/awards.html>.
The 2005 Leonardo Global Crossings Award
-
Type: discussion