Artists from Cuba, India, Lithuania, Mexico, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK
on shortlist for Artes Mundi 5 From the flamboyant to the intimate, action and performance are the common threads that link the artists shortlisted for this year’s £40,000 Artes Mundi Prize. From Phil Collins offering reality TV contestants a platform to critique their manipulation by the media, to the meticulous understatement through which Teresa Margolles addresses drug violence in Mexico, the seven artists use a wide range of materials, actions, and strategies to engage with social issues and comment on society. The shortlist for the fifth Artes Mundi Prize was announced today (26 January 2012) by Ben Borthwick, Artes Mundi’s Chief Executive and Artistic Director following an extensive research process by the two selectors – Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy, Curator of Contemporary Art at Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, New York and curatorial agent for dOCUMENTA (13), and Anders Kreuger, Curator at M HKA in Antwerp, Belgium. The selectors chose from over 750 nominations, including 576 individual artists from more than 90 countries, identifying artists whose work explores and comments on lived experience. The seven artists picked for this year’s Artes Mundi, sponsored by Bank of America Merrill Lynch as part of its Arts and Culture Programme, and publicly funded by the Arts Council of Wales and Cardiff Council are: Miriam Bäckström (Sweden), Tania Bruguera (Cuba), Phil Collins (England), Sheela Gowda (India), Teresa Margolles (Mexico), Darius Mikšys (Lithuania) and Apolonija Šušteršič (Slovenia). Some of the artists look at specific cultural or historical contexts while others engage with broader themes of human experience. The range of nationalities, themes and artistic media demonstrates the scope of the Artes Mundi Prize, which will be underlined in a major exhibition of works by the shortlisted artists atWales’s new National Museum of Art from 6 October 2012. The 14-week exhibition will be installed in almost 800 square metres of new contemporary art galleries, reinforcing Artes Mundi’s longstanding partnership with Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales. An international judging panel will award the £40,000 prize midway through the exhibition in November 2012. All other shortlisted artists will receive a new award of £4,000 each. A new partnership with Mostyn, the contemporary gallery in North Wales, will also see one of the shortlisted artists present a solo show there in the 2013. Artes Mundi | 
