One of the most important art prizes in the UK is to be split between its six nominees after the Artes Mundi 9 judging panel said it wanted to acknowledge the “exceptional social and economic upheaval” of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Artes Mundi – the Cardiff-based biennial exhibition that shows political art – will give £10,000 awards to the South African multimedia artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, Puerto Rico’s Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the Dominican Republic-born artist Firelei Báez, the American photographer Carrie Mae Weems, India’s Prabhakar Pachpute and the Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi.
The usual £40,000 individual prize – the largest visual art prize in Britain – was scrapped by the judging panel, which included curators Elvira Dyangani-Ose, Rachel Kent and Cosmin Costinas.
In a joint statement, the panel said they reached a “collective, unanimous decision” to award the Artes Mundi 9 prize to all six participating artists, whose work they said was “powerfully relevant today”.
A statement read: “Each artist has demonstrated great resilience in overcoming the…
