On Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Helena Uambembe, and Karimah Ashadu's Recent Wins; Spotlighting Stacey Gillian Abe's Work at the 60th Venice Biennale
Kitso Lynn Lelliott Wins The Henrike Grohs Art Award 2024
The Henrike Grohs Art Award was awarded to Botswanian artist Kitso Lynn Lelliott for articulating disobedience and disruption in her work. The art award recognizes artistic excellence and commitment to navigating diverse influences and re-anchoring knowledge beyond the conventional academic sphere.
Kitso Lynn Lelliott’s practice moves between video installation, film, and writing. She is preoccupied with enunciations from spaces beyond epistemic power and the crisis such epistemically disobedient articulations cause to hegemony. Her work interrogates the ‘real’ as it is shaped through contesting epistemologies, their narratives, and the form these took over the Atlantic during the formative episode that shaped the modern age.
“The Henrike Grohs Art Prize, in honour of its namesake, promotes the principles and values of international cultural exchange as understood by the Goethe-Institut and stands as a beacon for the recognition and support of outstanding artistic talent.”
— Johannes Ebert, Secretary General of the Goethe-Institut.
Kitjo Lynn Lelliot, I was her and she was me and those we might become 1, Installation view of Chamarande. Courtesy of Henri Perrot and Goethe-Institut.
The two runner-ups for this edition are Wambui Kamiru Collymore from Kenya and Frederick Ebenezer Okai from Ghana. The winner will receive a cash prize of 20.000€ and 10.000€ towards the publication of their work. The runners-up will receive 5.000€ each.
"We recognize the artists' strong commitment to re-anchoring knowledge beyond the conventional academic sphere. There is a notable effort to look back in order to move forward, finding anchors in different streams of existence. Frederick, Kitso, and Wambui have demonstrated a keen awareness of their artistic identity and the power to navigate diverse influences."
— 2024 Jury: Marie Helene Pereira (senior curator, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany), Meriem Berrada (artistic director, MACAAL in Marrakech, Morocco), and Tandazani Dhlakama (curator at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in Cape Town, South Africa).
Helena Uambembe wins ars viva prize 2025
South African-born artist Helena Uambembe (1994) is one of the three winners of the 2025 ars viva prize. Wisrah C. V. da R. Celestino and Vincent Scheers are the co-recipients of the prize.
Helena Uambembe is a storyteller or, as she describes herself, a keeper of (hi)stories. She is a guardian of her family’s personal stories, traumas, and happiness, of the collective amnesia shared by her community members and their families. Her work has been shown in Africa, Switzerland, and Germany, including solo exhibitions at Jahmek Contemporary Art (Luanda, Angola), Jahmek Contemporary Art (Basel, Switzerland), The Cultural Institute of Radical Contemporary Arts (CIRCA, Cape Town, South Africa) and FNB Art Joburg (Johannesburg, South Africa). Furthermore, she was part of group exhibitions in Galerie im Körnerpark (Berlin, Germany), INCCA (Johannesburg, South Africa) as well as La Biennale de Lubumbashi VII: Toxicity, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Goethe-Institut South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa).
Started in 1953, the ars viva prize of visual arts is annually awarded to young artists under 35 based in Germany. This year’s award is associated with exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bremen, Haus der Kunst in Munich, and an artist's residency on Fogo Island, Canada. The jury selected the awardees from 36 proposed artists under the age of 35 who live and work in Germany.
60th Venice Biennale: Silver Lion Goes to Karimah Ashadu
Karimah Ashadu was awarded the Silver Lion in the International Exhibition by the jury of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia for her work in Foreigners Everywhere curated by Adriano Pedroso. The Silver Lion is awarded to a Promising Young Artist in the International Exhibition.
Multimedia artist Karimah Ashadu (b. 1985) is a British-born Nigerian artist living and working between Hamburg and Lagos. Ashadu’s work is concerned with labour and self-determination practices pertaining to the social, economic, and cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora.
Her video Machine Boys (2024) examines the precarious lives of men who operate okada, a type of motorcycle taxi recently banned in Lagos. Ashadu dwells on the consequences of this ban while portraying the daily rituals and challenges faced by okada riders.
“With a searing intimacy, she captures the vulnerability of young men from the agrarian north of Nigeria who have migrated to Lagos and end up riding illegal motorbike taxis. Her feminist camera lens is extraordinarily sensitive and intimate, capturing the bikers’ subcultural experience as well as their economic precarity. Masterfully edited to draw out yet subtly critique the performance of masculinity on display, her sensual attention to surfaces of machine, flesh, and cloth reveals the rider’s marginal existence.”
— says the jury, consisting of Julia Bryan-Wilson (USA), President of the Jury, Alia Swastika (Indonesia), Chika Okeke-Agulu (Nigeria), Elena Crippa (Italy), and María Inés Rodríguez (France/Colombia).
This is Ashadu’s first time presenting at Biennale Arte.
Artist Spotlight: Stacey Gillian Abe
Stacey Gillian Abe (b. 1991) is a Kampala-born and Ugandan contemporary artist whose practice includes photography, sculpture, installation, performance, and painting. By drawing from past experiences and using her autobiography to highlight the strengths and fragilities of the female mind, her work references identity, gender, spirituality, and cultural mysticism by criticizing stereotypical depictions of black women.
Stacey Gillian Abe has been exhibited in both Africa and abroad, at the Nairobi Museum, Nairobi; Institut Francais Kinshasha, Kinshasa; Goethe Institute, Nairobi and the 12th Dakar Biennale, Dakar, among others. Her work is currently showing alongside 32 other female artists in a group show, Unapologetic WomXn: The Dream is the Truth at the 60th Venice Biennale, presented by Destinee Ross-Sutton, NY & Stockholm. These artists, including Sungi Mlengeya, Zanele Muholi, Rita Mawuena Benissan, and Nadia K Waheed, are exploring female sexuality outside the ideas of what a woman should be.
On view:
Constellations Part 1: Figures On Earth & Beyond: A group exhibition presented by Gallery 1957. This brings together emerging and established artists from within the gallery’s program like Johannes Phokela, Larry Amponsah, Lois Selasie Arde-Acquah, Modupeola Fadugba, and Zak Ové, and first-time collaborators with the gallery including Adelaide Damoah, Alberta Whittle, Andrew Pierre Hart, Ayesha Feisal, Ayomide Tejuoso (Plantation), Denyse Gawu-Mensah, Henry Hussey, Lisa C Soto, Phoebe Boswell, Rashaad Newsome, and Sarah Meyohas. (March 14 - May 25, 2024).
I can see you smiling Fatma: A solo exhibition of Egyptian-born Edinburgh-based artist, Fathi Hassan’s works at Richard Saltoun Gallery. (April 9 - May 25, 2024).
Wilfred Ukpong: BC-1 Niger-Delta/Future-Cosmos: A reflection on the degradation and exploitation in the Niger-Delta, a solo show by French Nigerian artist Wilfred Ukpong at Autograph, Rivington Place London. (February 16 - June 1, 2024).
