WIGA 2012
How much truth can art bear? This enigmatic quotation from French philosopher Alain Badiou was the springboard for the third annual What Is Good Art? Competition and Exhibition.
Read a profile of the competition and exhibition in the Duke Chronicle here.
The distinguished panel of judges for the 2012 competition included a mix of people new to the project and a number of returning experts:
Christopher Bass, Vice President at Oak Hill Capital Partners, L.P.
William Fick, Visiting Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual Arts
Noah Pickus, Director, Kenan Institute for Ethics
Kimerly Rorschach, Director, Nasher Museum of Art
Raquel Salvatella de Prada, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Visual and Media Arts
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Professor in Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics
Charles Thompson, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Duke Center for Documentary Studies
With a strong field, the judges chose to award two additional Honorable Mention Prizes in addition to First, Second, and Third Prizes.
Competitions winners were:
First Prize: Pinar Yoldas, Speculative Biologies
Second Prize: Nikita Yogeshwarun, Flaw
Third Prize: Rebecca Kuzemchak, Any Given Day
Honorable Mention: Yumian Deng, Musician Underground
Honorable Mention: Hannah Metaferia, Accademia
During the Opening Gala on April 13th, attendees voted for Gallery Choice prize, producing the the first-ever tie. This year’s Gallery Choice Prize co-winners are:
Carrie Arndt, Gollum
Colin Heasley, Gilt
View the Team Kenan’s curation companion guide to the exhibition here:
The full gallery is online below.
Rebecca Kuzemchak, Any Given Day
Third Prize
There is an old artistic trick concerning the human figure: if you incorporate it into your work, you drastically increase the likelihood of forming an emotional connection with your viewer. If you include a face, your odds rise again, and so does the magnitude of the connection. Some abstractionists will argue that this is a cheap shortcut—but it’s only natural. As social creatures whose well-being depends on interpersonal relationships, the human form should be the imagery most prone to moving us, be that movement a pleasant or less-than-pleasant experience.
Any Given Day takes the trick and uses it to force viewers into a face-to-face stare down with a depressing and morbid truth: on any given day, sixty Americans die by purposely overdosing on prescription drugs. The sixty featureless portraits that comprise the piece represent those victims. Each individual’s facial nuances—the essence of his or her identity—have been erased. In their place sits a pill. Once unique people, full of potential and occupying important places in the lives of those who cared about them, the sixty are now but generic statistics that blankly challenge the notion of obituary portraiture by employing it as an artistic avenue to advance awareness.
We ought to live attuned to signs that those around us might not want to live any longer—we ought to be educated enough to make it such that pieces of Any Given Day need to be discarded in order for it to remain statistically accurate.