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PinchukArtCentre Announces the Winners for the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2022

Dana Kavelina won the main award of the 7th edition of the PinchukArtCentre Prize, a nationwide award for Ukrainian artists aged 35 or younger. For her 3D animation It can't be that there's nothing that can't be returned, she was awarded UAH 370,000 (about $10,000) and automatically shortlisted for Future Generation Art Prize 2023, a worldwide contemporary art prize.

Nikolay Karabinovych, Anton Saenko, and Kateryna Lysovenko received special mentions of the jury. In addition to UAH 60,000 (approximately $1,650), the PinchukArtCentre will offer each winner special assistance in their artistic development through the production of an artwork or an art residence. The public choice award of UAH 37,000 (approximately $1,000) went to Mykhailo Alekseenko for his work Fragments. The winner of this category was chosen by visitors to the PinchukArtCentre.

The winners were selected by a distinguished international jury consisting of Yevgenia Belorusets, a Ukrainian artist, writer, and photographer; Martha Kirszenbaum, the Curator of the French Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale; Bart De Baere, Director of M KHA; and Björn Geldhof, Artistic Director of the PinchukArtCentre.

According to the jury’s statement, “each and every artist in this exhibition should win the award, because it is vital for Ukraine as a society to see that artists continue their critical and thinking work. And it is of particular courage and importance under the pressure of war”.

“That’s why the jury insisted that they should make recognition to each of the work presented at the exhibition (the jury recognition you may find below). From among those 18 nominees, jury highlighted four participants, of which one received the main award. Additionally, jury strongly recommended to the organisers of the PinchukArtCentre Prize promoting not only the winner of the main award but also the three other special mentions to the Future Generation Art Prize 2023.”

Commenting the awarding ceremony, Founder of the PinchukArtCentre Prize Victor Pinchuk said:

“War is raging several hundred kilometers from here. Heroes risk their lives. There are many fronts in this war — diplomatic, political. Of course, the military front is the most important. However, the cultural front is also of great importance and on this front you — artists — you are the warriors. Your work is also our weapon. This is very important for Ukraine at this time. You tell the whole world about our tragedy and about our heroism. You inspire Ukrainians at the front, and you inspire Ukrainians here. I am sure that this award will contribute to our victory!”

Regarding the jury's proposal to include all the awarded artists of the 7th PinchukArtCentre Prize 2022 in the shortlist of the international Future Generation Art Prize 2023, Victor Pinchuk noted: "This is a good idea. I promise to consult with the jury members of the Future Generation Art Prize, with the winners of the shortlist, and we have to make a wise decision.”

Awarding the Main Prize Winner Dana Kavelina, the jury undefined:

Her work is a long poem confronting a distorted reality with a holistic utopian view of the future. Focusing on empathy and offering ways of coexistence of conflicting memories in a world where the dead are brought back to life and live in fundamental equality with all elements around.

Comenting on the work of the first Special Prize Winner Nikolay Karabinovych, the jury noted:

He offers a powerful image of embodied memory in the form of a choreography of the impossible. It combines both the loneliness and connectivity in the human condition. The intense presence of a fare-away landscape in his work evokes exile and emptiness that is surrounding an ever-displaced person.

Awarding Anton Saenko with the second Special Prize the jury said:

He offers an imagination through his voice of a changing landscape that carries within itself a history, a trauma and a possibility to exist in them in a fully situated way. The apparent emptiness is filled with the sonority and resonance of a poem by the important and repressed Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus.

The participants of the PinchukArtCentre Prize 2022 were shortlisted by an independent selection committee from more than 1,000 applicants.

The shortlist of 18 nominees who are presenting their projects at PinchukArtCentre includes: Mykhailo Alekseenko (32, Kyiv), Yana Bachynska (31, Lviv), Yuriy Biley (34, Uzhhorod/Wroclaw/Berlin), Artem Humilevskyi (36, Mykolaiv), Viktoriia Dovhadze (30, Lviv), Yuri Yefanov (32, Kyiv), Dana Kavelina (27, Melitopol/Lviv/Berlin), Nikolay Karabinovych (34, Kyiv/Antwerp), Dariia Kuzmych (31, Kyiv), Kateryna Lysovenko (33, Odesa/Kyiv), Krystyna Melnyk (29, Kyiv), Pavla Nikitina (25, Brno), Anton Saenko (33, Sumy/Kyiv), Oleksandr Sirous (26, Kharkiv/Kyiv), Maksym Khodak (21, Bila Tserkva/Kyiv), Petro Vladimirov (29, Luhansk/Warsaw) and Oleksandra Maiboroda (26, Kyiv/Warsaw), Daniil Revkovskiy (29, Kharkiv) and Andriy Rachinskiy (32, Kharkiv), and commercial public art (30, Kyiv/36, Odesa).