Winners of Praemium Imperiale 2024, the Oscars of Art, announced

The winners of the Praemium Imperiale 2024, the Oscar of Art, were announced this morning. They are Sophie Calle (France) for painting, Doris Salcedo (Colombia) for sculpture, Shigeru Ban (Japan) for architecture, Maria João Pires (Portugal/Switzerland) for music, and Ang Lee (Republic of China, Taiwan) for theater/cinema. The artists are honored for their achievements, their influence on the art world internationally, and their contribution to the world community through their work. Each of the winners will receive a prize of 15 million yen (about 90,000 euros), a diploma and a medal. The latter will be bestowed by the Honorary Patron of the Japan Art Association, Prince Hitachi, during the award ceremony to be held in Tokyo on November 19.

The Praemium Imperiale is the most important art award in existence and is awarded in five disciplines: painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and theater/film. It confers international recognition in the arts equal to that of the Nobel Prizes. The 2024 winners will join 175 artists already honored with the prize, including Italians Claudio Abbado, Gae Aulenti, Luciano Berio, Cecco Bonanotte, Enrico Castellani, Federico Fellini, Sophia Loren, Umberto Mastroianni, Mario Merz, Riccardo Muti, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Renzo Piano, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Maurizio Pollini, Arnaldo Pomodoro, and Giuliano Vangi.

The Praemium Imperiale 2024 Fellowship for Young Artists, on the other hand, was awarded to Komunitas Salihara Arts Center (Indonesia). The announcement and awarding of the Fellowship took place on September 10 in Tokyo at a press conference chaired by Hisashi Hieda, president of the Japan Art Association. The Komunitas Salihara Arts Center received a diploma and a grant of 5 million yen (about 30,000 euros). Nirwan Dewanto, chief curator and program director of the Salihara, and Ening Nurjanah, program manager, attended the press conference. The Fellowship was established in 1997 to support and encourage young artists, in line with the goals of the Japan Art Association’s activities. Promising young artists or organizations that actively contribute to the development of new talent are eligible. Artists must be professionals or in training. On a rotating basis, each International Councilor, in consultation with its committee, selects the recipient of the Fellowship and notifies the Japan Art Association, which approves it. The award is conferred at the same time as the announcement of the Praemium Imperiale in the country of the Councilor to whom the recommendation is made. Previous winners of the Praemium Imperiale Young Artist Fellowship include organizations from Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Benin, Myanmar, Malaysia and Lebanon. Among others, the Italian Scuola di Alta Formazione dell’Istituto Centrale per il Restauro, JuniOrchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Orchestra Giovanile Italiana, and De Sono Associazione per la Musica were honored.

Profiles of the winners

Sophie Calle is one of France’s leading conceptual artists, committed to exploring the lives of others, as well as her own, through the photographs and texts that characterize her work. Her innovative style, which transforms everyday spaces and lives into art, has captured the attention of a global audience, culminating in her being awarded the title of French Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2012 and the Honorary Fellowship of the British Royal Photographic Society in 2019. Calle’s artistic journey began with a quest to capture the voices and images of others. In his first work, Les Dormeurs (“The Sleepers,” 1979), he invited strangers to his home to photograph them as they slept in his bed, interviewing them afterward. Composed of photographs and text, this creation was not initially intended to be “art,” but derived naturally from his involvement in the lives of others through a “game” of his own devising. One of her best-known works, Suite Vénitienne (“Venetian Suite,” 1980), required her to secretly follow a man she had met at a party in Paris to Venice. Exploiting a variety of disguises, she photographed him in black and white, methodically noting all his movements. The audience is thus drawn inside the voyeuristic world created by the artist. Since then, Calle has continued to follow and explore the lives of others. In Les Aveugles (“The Blind,” 1986) she asked several people born blind, who had never been able to see, how they imagined beauty. The artist also bravely put his own life on display in his work. In Douleur Exquise (“Exquisite Pain,” 1999-2000) she used photographs and words to document and express the pain felt by a broken heart. In Prenez soin de vous (“Take Care of You,” 2007), a work created for the French pavilion at the Venice Biennale, she asked 107 women, selected on the basis of their profession or specific skills, to give their interpretation to a letter with which a lover had left her. They were to analyze it, comment on it, respond for her. Today, with more and more people sharing their personal lives through social media, Calle acknowledges that her style was ahead of its time and also notes that she would have a much harder time following a stranger now than she did in 1979. The artist leaves the interpretation of her works to the public, arguing that “it is up to the viewer to describe their art.” Ultimately, he creates poetic portraits through unspoken words, the everyday and the secret. Her art transforms the viewer into an accomplice and collaborator.

Doris Salcedo, a sculptor and installation creator who lives and works in Bogota, uses familiar materials, such as wooden furniture, clothing and flower petals, as metaphors for themes of violence, loss, remembrance and grief. She reuses and transforms these materials to create her art. Her passion for drawing emerged when she was six years old, the age at which she began taking classes. He studied art at the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Bogota before moving in the early 1980s to the United States, where he earned a master’s degree from New York University. The civil war that raged for more than 50 years in Colombia between leftist guerrillas, such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and state forces and right-wing militias was the basis for her creative work. “Growing up in Colombia,” she said, “allowed me to develop a perspective from which to look at the world. It has defined the totality of my work.” All of her work is based on the experiences of victims of violence. “First,” he explains, “to bear witness to the violence so that it cannot be easily forgotten. Second, to show empathy for the suffering of victims through my work. Third, I want my works to be the language of critical analysis and reflection on what is happening in the world.” Doris Salcedo’s work begins with an in-depth research phase, which includes several interviews; production is initiated only after the artist has gained a deep understanding of the crimes and issues she intends to address. “It takes years,” he notes, “to really understand crime and the devastating effect political violence has on its victims. Her installation Shibboleth (2007) at London’s Tate Modern brought her significant recognition. It featured cracks in the floor of Turbine Hall, representing themes of slavery and racism resulting from colonial history. Another noteworthy work, Fragmentos (”Fragments,“ 2018), commemorates the end of the civil war in Colombia. It consists of 1,296 tiles made from 37 tons of melted weapons voluntarily surrendered by FARC guerrillas, then assembled to create the floor of the exhibition hall in Bogota. Twenty women who were victims of sexual violence in the context of the civil war hammered the molten metal into the tiles that then went on to make up the floor of a space dedicated to art and memory. ”This process,“ she said, ”restored their strength and dignity. The weapons were destroyed. A very significant gesture, because lives were saved. At the same time, the lives of the victims were transformed by it. It is perhaps the only work that really activated a change in reality.“ He is currently working on a work made of human hair to address ”domicide,“ or mass destruction of civilian dwellings, a crime that goes unpunished. The work addresses the deliberate destruction of people’s homes ”for the sole purpose of creating suffering and causing the forced displacement of victims, as you can see happening in Ukraine, Gaza or Syria.“ Her studio houses a team of about 50 people, and she describes her works as a group effort, noting, ”What I do is the product not of a soloist, but of a chorus." She has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Hiroshima Art Prize (2014), the Nasher Prize for Sculpture (2015), and the Nomura Art Award (2019). She is the first Colombian artist to receive the Praemium Imperiale.

Shigeru Ban, with his innovative use of materials and unique designs, has revolutionized architecture. He creates buildings that are as monumental as they are comforting, never losing sight of his role as an architect in an increasingly unstable world. As a child, he aspired to become a carpenter. “I didn’t know what an architect did; I thought all buildings were made by carpenters,” he said, recalling his childhood. His youthful passion for using wood as a material continues to influence his work to this day. Ban decided to go to the United States to study architecture after seeing in a magazine the works of John Hejduk, a well-known American architect. He began his studies at the Southern California Institute of Architecture before transferring to the Cooper Union School of Architecture in New York. After returning to Japan in 1985, he opened his own architectural practice. One of his first commissioned works was the design of his mother’s workshop. At the same time he designed the venue for an exhibition devoted to the work of his favorite architect, Finland’s Alvar Aalto. Ban initially wanted to use wood in the exhibition design, inspired by Aalto’s frequent use of this material. But budget constraints and a reluctance to use such a valuable material for a temporary structure prompted him to look for an alternative. Thus it was that he discovered recycled cardboard cylinders, the same ones inserted in the center of the rolls of thermal and tracing paper used in his studio. This sparked the idea of using them to develop structures, thus realizing the dream he had carried with him since his school days of creating something unique by exploiting materials in innovative and original ways. As his reputation for using recycled materials grew, Ban was awarded the design of the Expo 2000 Japan Pavilion, held in Hanover, themed “Environment.” For this project, he collaborated with German architect and structural engineer Frei Otto (Praemium Imperiale 2006), whom he admired for his ability to derive maximum space from minimum use of energy and materials. The collaboration was a huge success, plus it helped to expand Ban’s structural expertise. The use of cheap and humble materials became a central aspect of his philosophy, geared toward promoting socially responsible architecture, particularly to provide housing for people made homeless by conflict or natural disasters. With this in mind, Ban began making cardboard tube structures in 1994 for refugees from the war raging in Rwanda. Such constructions, though simple, proved extremely effective and continue to this day to provide shelter for the displaced. In response to the devastating earthquake that struck the Japanese city of Kōbe in 1995, Ban founded the Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN). Converted into a nonprofit organization in 2013, VAN is committed to providing support in all disaster-stricken regions of Japan and the world. Ban has also designed a large number of iconic museums and theaters, including the Centre Pompidou-Metz (2010), with its corrugated laminated wood roof and membrane, and La Seine Musicale (2017). He received the Pritzker Prize in 2014, the Mother Teresa Award for Social Justice in 2017, and the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord in 2022 for his humanitarian work. Throughout his career, Ban has applied an original structural system to all his projects, large or small, whether civil buildings or emergency shelters. At the heart of his work is the belief that architecture should create something positive for society. “I design houses and public buildings,” she said, "but offering disaster relief is my life’s work.

Born in Lisbon in 1944, Maria João Pires began playing piano on her own when she was three years old. A year later she gave her first public performance. Between 1953 and 1960 she studied at the Lisbon Conservatory with Professor Campos Coelho and Francine Benoit. At seventeen he received a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon to study in Germany, initially at the Musikhochschule in Munich with Rosl Schmid and then in Hanover with Karl Engel. She credits Engel with helping her place music in the context of life. Her debut recitals at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1986 and Carnegie Hall in New York in 1989 were the beginning of her international career. In addition to concerts, she recorded music for Erato for fifteen years and for Deutsche Grammophon for twenty-five. Since the 1970s she has dedicated herself to reflecting on the influence of art on life, community and education, trying to discover new ways to spread this thinking in society, to encourage individuals and cultures to respect and share ideas. In 1999 he created the Belgais Centre for the Study of the Arts in Portugal, where he trained several choirs composed of children from humble backgrounds and held workshops and experimental concerts for both professional and amateur artists. In 2012, he complemented the Belgais approach with two other projects carried out in Belgium: the Partitura Choirs, which formed and developed choirs composed of children from rural and disadvantaged backgrounds, and the Partitura Workshops, where different generations share the stage to find alternatives to competition and create an altruistic dynamic among artists. Both projects aimed to promote respect for each other and for all cultures, for the environment, nature and life, understanding the earth and everything around us.

Director Ang Lee, originally from Taiwan, works mainly in the United States. He has gained worldwide fame by creating films that combine artistic portraits of people coping with the currents of the times with enough entertainment power to appeal to a wide audience. While attending high school, of which his father was the principal, Lee developed an obsession with film, to the point of failing his college entrance exams. He studied at the National Taiwan University of the Arts, where he realized that he “belonged in the world of theater.” After graduation, he went to live in the United States to study theater at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He earned a master’s degree in film production from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. The film he made for his thesis, Fine Line (1984), won NYU’s Wasserman Award for directing. While living in New York he made his debut feature film with a U.S.-Taiwanese co-production, Pushing Hands (1991). He won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival twice, with The Wedding Banquet (1993) and the North American and British co-production Sense and Sensibility (1995). The latter film, which Lee himself says “turned him into a professional,” was nominated for seven Academy Awards and catapulted him into the Hollywood spotlight. He won an Oscar for best foreign language film with The Tiger and the Dragon (2000), an adaptation of a Chinese martial arts novel. He received his first Oscar for best director with The Secrets of Brokeback Mountain (2005), a film about the love between two men. He went on to win the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival with The Secrets of Brokeback Mountain and with Lust-Seduction and Betrayal (2007), a spy film set in Shanghai during the years of Japanese occupation. He won his second Oscar for best director with Life of Pi (2012), a 3-D film about a boy who finds himself stranded on a raft along with a tiger. “After reading the novel for the first time, I didn’t think it would be possible to make a movie out of it,” he comments. He shot most of the film in Taiwan, managing to overcome technical difficulties. Since his debut films about the conflict between a Taiwanese father and his son living in the United States, he has worked on different genres and themes, including the American Civil War, Watergate, comic book superheroes, the Iraq War, and sci-fi action stories. He cites various Japanese directors, such as Yasujiro Ozu, as his inspiration and has known Hirokazu Kore-eda for a long time, as the latter’s father was born in Taiwan. As the first Taiwanese artist to receive the Praemium Imperiale he said, “This is indeed a great honor, which I accept wholeheartedly. I am very proud for Taiwan to receive such an award.”

The Komunitas Salihara Arts Center is Indonesia’s first private cultural complex dedicated to promoting various types of expressive activities, such as music, dance, theater, literature and visual arts. It began as Komunitas Utan Kayu, an arts, intellectual and political inspiration organization founded in 1995 during the military regime, and then took its current form in Jakarta in August 2008 with the support of artists, writers, intellectuals and journalists. The Center is named after its host street, Jalan Salihara (Salihara Street), where “salihara” is the name of a flower in the verbenaceae family. The Center’s mission is to promote artistic activities that support freedom of thought and expression, respect diversity, and enhance artistic and intellectual resources. To this end, the organization encourages experimental programs with long-term perspectives and aims to develop a critical eye among its audiences. The 3,800-square-meter Center includes an indoor theater with a black box stage, dedicated dance and music studios, an art gallery, a store and a bar. It hosts a wide variety of events: theater and dance performances, concerts, exhibitions, readings and debates. Each year it is the location of more than one hundred programs, including workshops and seminars. Although most events are held in collaboration with other private and semi-governmental entities, both Indonesian and foreign, the Komunitas Salihara Arts Center also organizes its own festivals. Among the most popular ones are an international performing arts review, a forum of outstanding theater productions, a mini-festival focusing on new choreographies that revisit dance traditions, a festival of literature and ideas that hosts a number of contemporary writers, a forum reserved for jazz with top musicians, and a forum of contemporary music, featuring a wide variety of genres. The Center is known for its active inclusion of young talent and its interdisciplinary approach to the arts. One of its innovative initiatives involved performing a contemporary dance based on traditional martial arts movements within the gallery, integrating the performance into the artwork itself. In response to different artistic trends, the Komunitas Salihara Arts Center discovers innovative ideas and new talent, helping the public find what they are looking for. Nirwan Dewanto (poet and essayist, chief curator and director of programs at Salihara) pointed out, “By focusing on the program, we think of different ways to engage in dialogue with the community and, at the same time, critically engage with artists’ experimental aspirations. Through this close collaboration we can encourage greater freedom of expression and bring out new talent.” Jason Mountario, a young jazz musician who performed at the Center, added, “We are free to do what we want. We have a responsibility to respond to that freedom.”

Winners of Praemium Imperiale 2024, the Oscars of Art, announced

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