Vermehrt Schönes! Art Award 2021 goes to Nina Schuiki
In 2021 the ExtraVALUE Art Award, for which das weisse haus is responsible and which is supported by Erste Bank Sponsoring Programme, was awarded for the first time in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum London in the form of a thematic call. With Catharsis and Kairos, ACF London is dedicating itself to a topic that reflects on our relationship to the world around us and asks for alternative approaches to redefine our relationships with each other and our environment.
Dedicated to artists who have been included in our program, the award was presented again in a two-stage competition: In the first round, the quality of the artistic work was judged on the basis of the submitted portfolios and ten candidates were nominated to develop an exhibition concept in the second round.
Jury Statement
Nina Schuiki’s proposal offered a subtle and refreshing intervention into the architectural contexts creating a uniting installation that draws both venues together. The jury was drawn to the delicate approach to creating space for emotions, that has summerised the mood of the past year of pandemic, without being literal or didactic. In the shadow of these recent moments of global pause, Schuiki’s work will consider the conceptual spaces between outside and inside and the ever present cyclical concept of time. Her emotive response to curatorial remit of Catharsis and Kairos was a quiet and moving voice including an ambitious public work that will be visible at street level.
Jury Members
Hannah Conroy (Co-founder und curator Kunstraum London), Waltraud Dennhardt-Herzog (Director ACF London), Vanessa Fewster (Visual Arts & Film Project Manager ACF London), Alexandra Grausam (Director das weisse haus / studio das weisse haus) und Astrid Peterle (Chief-curator Jewish Museum Vienna and curator donaufestival Krems)
Finalists
Florian Aschka / Larissa Kopp, Peter Fritzenwallner, Elodie Grethen, Johannes Gierlinger, Sophie Hirsch, Annja Krautgasser, Ryts Monet, Christina Werner, Stephanie Winter
Recepient: Nina Schuiki
Through her fine, mostly site-specific or context-related work, Nina Schuiki creates various in-between spaces of perception that often reveal far-reaching associations and convey emotions. She creates spatial atmospheres with seemingly minimalist gestures and thereby explores basic questions about our understanding of space in general as well as the location of the individual in time and space. Fragility, as well as the potential for change, the possibility of destruction and therefore impermanence always play a decisive role in her work. Air, water, tears, curtains, pauses in conversation filled with unconscious sounds, light and shadow, among other things, are the material of Nina Schuiki’s artistic interventions. With her works Nina Schuiki examines an unusually tangible dematerialisation of art, which is astonishing precisely via this apparent paradox. (Julia Thiemann)
About Nina Schuiki
Born in 1983 in Graz (Austria) Nina Schuiki lives and works in Berlin (Germany). She studied at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (2009–2012) as well as at the University of the Arts Berlin (2012–2014). Her work has been presented ins everal exhibitions in Austria and abroad.
Participation in the program of das weisse haus / studio das weisse haus
random thoughts of a daily light, group exhibition 2015
die weiße ab-haus-verkaufs-kunstschau, group exhibition 2012–2014
The Borders of Drawing, group exhibition 2011
Les nuits blanches, group exhibition 2010