CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 94th ANNUAL AWARD WINNERS!
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We are very pleased to announce the award winners from The Print Center's 94th ANNUAL,
and to give you a closer look at some of their work
. Thank you to our generous donors for allowing us to recognize these outstanding artists.
In total, we have awarded more than
$8,000 in purchase, cash and material prizes as well as three solo exhibitions!
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Our esteemed jurors
Charlotte Cotton,
Curator-in-Residence, California Museum of Photography, Riverside, and
Gretchen Wagner,
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Prints, Drawings, and Photographs, Saint Louis Art Museum, selected
10 Finalists and 25 Semifinalists from over 500 international artists who submitted. Congratulations to all of the artists selected for their outstanding use of photography and printmaking as critical components of their work.
P
ortfolios of work by the Finalists and Semifinalists are presented
here
.
The Print Center ANNUAL is one of the oldest and most prestigious competitions in the United States. It focuses on highlighting local, national and international artists who utilize photography and printmaking in intriguing ways that push the boundaries of form, process and content.
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This photograph by Steph Foster captures the ritual known as "bottle blessing." Those gathered place their hands on the bottle before drinking in memory of a deceased loved one. This is one of many moments captured in Foster's series "The Eyes Beneath the Oak". It explores the effects of contemporary mass incarceration on individuals, families and communities, as well as its connection to the history of slavery and capitalism in the United States. The "eyes" in its title gestures to the pervasive power of surveillance - as defined by the panopticon of 18th century philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The "oak" refers to the Louisiana Live Oaks, a type of tree common in the southern American landscape where Foster has photographed since 2017.
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Studio Portrait (Aajooba, Neela Atya, Sona, Mona and Me)
, 2017
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Priya Kambli's series "Buttons for Eyes" explores the nexus of migration and identity through the manipulation of archival photographs. In 1993, Kambli emigrated from India to the United States, bringing with her a portion of her family's photographic archive. Today, she reimagines these images in new contexts, often applying a delicately patterned layer of flour or turmeric to their surfaces. The title of the series refers to Kambli's late mother, who used to ask her daughter whether she had "buttons for eyes" whenever she could not see what was right in front of her nose.
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Untitled (the Void)
, 2016
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K MacNeil's
work explores the realities of life with a mental illness. Untitled (the Void) takes its title from a quotation by the Italian writer Italo Calvino: "To fall in the void as I fell: none of you knows what that means." MacNeil manifests this void through constructing a grid-like structure of twenty five 18" x 24" etchings pulled from a single copper plate. Each represents a year in their life at the time of production. By altering the plate between pulls, MacNeil creates a work in which the process and final product are intertwined.
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Using the tropes of documentary photography and narrative fiction, Nadia Sablin's images of everyday life in rural Russia and Ukraine touch upon universal experiences. Her work chronicles the socio-economic changes across generations in these fledgling post-Soviet nations. This photo from the series "Years Like Water" is of two members of the Vysotskiye family, who live in the village of Alekhovshchina. With her back to the camera, the mother looks on as her daughter dunks herself into an icy pool. This ritual marks the Russian Orthodox celebration of the Epiphany on January 19th.
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Guanyu Xu: Honorary Council Award of Excellence
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Opened Closets (Parents' Bedroom), 2019
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Forbidden to hang posters in his bedroom as a teenager, Guanyu Xu made up for lost time with the series "Temporarily Censored Home". Executed over the course of two trips to China in summer 2018 and winter 2019, the photographs were taken while his parents were at work. This covert operation, which entailed the careful installation of Xu's own photographs alongside magazine advertisements and other printed matter, boldly queered the heterosexual domesticity of his childhood home. Many of the images exhibit intimate relations between men, proud testaments to the artist's expression of self and sexuality.
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We are Also Pleased to Award:
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The Callan/McNamara Award
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Miguel A. Aragón: Indices of Silence/Índices del silencio. Installation views: Jaime Alvarez
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Young Sun Han: The Unforever Parallel
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Ron Tarver: An Overdue Conversation With My Father
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Artists
using photography or printmaking as critical components of their work are invited to submit. Artists whose work pushes the boundaries of traditional photographic and printmaking practices are encouraged to enter.
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