For the first time in its history, the Visible Award will conduct its fourth biennial Temporary Parliament in the United States, at the Queens Museum on December 2, 2017, 10am to 6pm. The event, which is free and open to the public, will convene a Temporary Parliament that will engage new audiences with nine art projects shortlisted for this year’s award. Members of the public and assembled experts and guests from many fields will gather to experience presentations, discussion, and debate, followed by an open vote that will determine the winner of the 2017 Visible Award. The Award will be presented by the visionary artist and Artistic Director of Cittadellarte, Michelangelo Pistoletto , who conceived of the event along with Fondazione Zegna. This year, the Award will be chaired by Laura Raicovich , Director of the Queens Museum, who will host the debate together with Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander, co-directors of the Visible project, and Elvira Dyangani Ose, Senior Curator at Creative Time, who will be the advocate for all of the projects ( the videos of the nine shortlisted projects are already available for public review on Visible’s website, in advance of the Temporary Parliament).
What is Visible? Visible is a contemporary art research project devoted to producing and sustaining socially engaged art practices in a global context. Operating since 2010, it has taken a global and interdisciplinary approach to researching the physical and theoretical spaces in which these practices affect society. In 2011, Visible initiated the biennial Visible Award, the first European award for socially engaged artistic practices in a global context, seeking to offer a platform for innovative projects that have the potential to become visible in fields other than artistic ones.
As a nomadic institution, Visible – part of the Extended Network of Public Art Producers (ENPAP) – has worked with a variety of formats, collaborations, and institutions, including Tate, Liverpool; Creative Time, New York; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Kunsthaus, Graz; Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco; Center for Historical Reenactments, Johannesburg; The Serpentine Galleries, London: and the Fondation Lafayette, Paris. Visible is part of the Extended Network of Public Art Producers (ENPAP). The Visible project is directed by Matteo Lucchetti and Judith Wielander, and initiated by Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto in collaboration with Fondazione Zegna.
Visible’s approach has been unique from the outset for piloting the public jury format at the 2013 Award at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven. Subsequently, in 2015, the Award was organized in collaboration with Tate Liverpool at the Liverpool City Council, where the notion of a Temporary Parliament was inaugurated. The public’s engagement in the assessment and voting on the art projects transformed the Award into an occasion for collective learning and the expansion of the discourse instigated by and around the projects.
The Queens Museum is the ideal setting for the event, since it has a long-standing commitment to socially engaged art, and its New York City Building was the location of early meetings of the United Nations from 1946-50,making it ideally suited to host Visible’s Temporary Parliament. This history was influential in determining the Queens Museum as a partner, and will impact the design of the physical space of the Parliament which is being led by London based design studio The Decorators. The debate of the jury as a Temporary Parliament is not simply a dialogue between experts, in order to select an exemplary socially engaged art project, but also a moment for sharing knowledge and collective learning. In the process of assessing the winning project – who will receive a prize of 25.000 euros – the jury will also offer an opportunity to deepen the debate around artistic engagement in the public domain.
The following nine projects have been shortlisted from a list of 60, nominated by the 2017 Visible advisory board (see the attached appendix). The projects are: The School of Engaged Art by Chto Delat (Saint Petersburg, Russia), proposed by Martina Angelotti; Brigada Puerta de Tierra by Jesús ‘Bubu’ Negrón and Luis Agosto-Leduc (San Juan, Puerto Rico), proposed by Julia Morandeira; Hunger, Inc. by Elia Nurvista (Yogyakarta, Indonesia), proposed by Tang Fu Kuen ; Sakiya – Art/Science/Agriculture by Nida Sinnokrot (Ramallah, Palestine), proposed by Nat Muller; The Reading Room by Narawan Kyo Pathomvat (Bangkok, Thailand), proposed by Simon Soon and Tang Fu Kuen; Inhabitants by Pedro Neves Marques and Mariana Silva (New York, USA), proposed by Margarida Mendes; Cercle d’Art des Travailleurs de Plantation Congolaise by Renzo Martens (Former Unilever Palm Oil Plantation, Lusanga, Democratic Republic of the Congo), proposed by Victoria Ivanova; Social Botany, Land and Turf by Xu Tan, (New York, US; Shenzhen, China), proposed by Xiaoyu Weng; IsumaTV by Zacharias Kunuk (Igloolik Hamlet, North Baffin Island, Canadian Arctic Archipelago) , proposed by Candice Hopkins.
