Two former Delfina residents win the award.
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, The Incidental Insurgents. Installation, Points of Departure exhibition, ICA, London, 2015. Photo: Mark Blower.
The Winning Artist of the Abraaj Group Art Prize for 2016 are former residents and artist-duo, Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme. Additionally two other former residents are amoung the shortlisted artists, Dina Danish and Mahmoud Khaled.
Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme, who began their collaborative practice in 2007, work together across a range of sound, image, text, installation and performance practices. The duo explain that their experiences in Palestine, where they are originally from, shape their practice, “not in isolation, but in the sense of how each experience speaks to other moments elsewhere and provides a critical vantage point from which to read the contemporary moment.”
Artists from the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia were invited to submit proposals for a major new commission—a dream project—to be produced through a 100,000 USD award and then revealed as part of a group exhibition at the 10th edition of Art Dubai, March 16–19, 2016. The exhibition also features works by the three shortlisted artists, each of whom receive a cash prize of 10,000 USD. The Abraaj Group Art Prize is the only art prize of its kind that awards artists based on a proposal rather than on a completed work.
Previous Abraaj Prize winners who were resident artists of Delfina Foundation include: Hrair Sarkissian, Abbas Akhavan, Raed Yassin, Wael Shawky, Shezad Dawood and Nadia Kaabi-Linke.