The shortlist for the UK’s largest art prize, the Artes Mundi, was announced Jan 27 by the Artes Mundi artistic director, Ben Borthwick. The seven finalists for the prize, which confers upon one winner GBP 40,000 and provides the runners-up with GBP 4000, were selected from over 750 nominations from more than 90 countries. Their works will go on view in an exhibition to be held from Oct 6 of this year to Jan 13, 2013, at the recently established National Museum of Art ❘ National Museum Wales in Cardiff, inaugurated in July 2011.
Selected by Anders Kreuger of M HKA in Antwerp and Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, the finalists include Miriam Bäckström from Sweden, Tania Bruguera from Cuba, Sheela Gowda from India and the UK’s own Phil Collins. The other candidates are Teresa Margolles from Mexico, Darius Mikšys from Lithuania and Apolonija Šušteršič from Slovenia. Previous winners of the Artes Mundi, now heading into its fifth edition, are Yael Bartana (2010), NS Harsha (2008), Eija-Liisa Ahtila (2006) and Xu Bing (2004).