C/O Berlin is the only institution in Europe to offer a funding program aimed at the next generation of artists and art theorists. The C/O Berlin Talent Award is awarded each year in the categories of Art and Theory to individuals under thirty-five years of age. The award carries a cash prize for both winners as well as a solo exhibition and an individually designed publication. A joint talk rounds off this union of theory and practice.
Culture Lost and Learned by Heart, Memory, Video (14 min), Videostill
© Adji Dieye
C/O BERLIN TALENT AWARD
Adji Dieye . Culture Lost and Learned by Heart
C/O Berlin is pleased to present this year‘s C/O Berlin Talent Award in the category Artist to the Italian-Senegalese artist Adji Dieye. Her award-winning work Culture Lost and Learned by Heart will be presented in a solo exhibition from December 11, 2021, to March 5, 2022, at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus at Hardenbergstraße 22-24, 10623 Berlin. The four artists Leonard Suryajaya (USA), Marina Caneve (IT), Max Colson (GB), and Salma Abedin Prithi (BGD) were selected for the Shortlist 2021.
The C/O Berlin Talent Award 2021 in the category Theorist goes to the Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma. He will be writing the first theoretical essay on the work Culture Lost and Learned by Heart by Adji Dieye which will appear alongside an interview with the artist in the upcoming monograph published by Spector Books.
In our digital epoch, in which we produce and consume more images than ever before in human history, the archive has become emblematic for the rejection of this form of consumption. The C/O Berlin Talent Award 2021 recognizes a more con- temporary strategy of extended documentary practice and honors a project based on the editing of existing images. Culture Lost and Learned by Heart by the Italian- Senegalese artist Adji Dieye (b.1991) enters into a critical dialog with a colonial insti- tution like the image archive, which is commonly associated with the visual documentation of history and regarded as the gatekeeper of historical truth. The project draws on found archival material from the National Archives of Senegal (Archives Nationales du Sénégal), a collection deeply inscribed with the history of French colonial rule. In re-reading this material, the artist deconstructs the hierarchies con- tained within it. Using additional, present-day visual materials, she further confronts new forms of displacement and exclusion: to what extent does the visual framing of a historical narrative lead to the exercise of political control today? From roughly 100 international artists, the jury unequivocally and unanimously se- lected Adji Dieye for her striking and provocative work, which deepens the explora- tion of decolonization begun in last year’s winning project and continues it in a very different material way.
The C/O Berlin Talent Award 2021 in the category Theory honors Emmanuel Iduma (b. 1989), a versatile writer and art critic. Iduma’s focus on issues in photography and new media as well as contemporary African art and colonial history provide an ideal art critical reflection of the award-winning artistic project. He was selected from a field of 26 highly qualified international competitors. The jury was particularly impressed by Iduma’s ability to explore current (socio-)political topics within their historical context and to present complex ideas in a compelling and rigorously researched manner.
Adji Dieye (b. 1991, IT/SEN) studied New Technologies for Art at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan and completed a Master of Fine Arts at the Zurich Univer- sity of the Arts. Her work has been included in international group exhibitions at FOAM Amsterdam (2020), Kunsthalle Wien (2020), as well as the African Photo Bi- ennale in Bamako, Mali (2019) and the Lagos Photo Festival (2017). C/O Berlin is presenting her first institutional solo exhibition. Adji Dieye divides her time between Milan, Zurich, and Dakar.
Emmanuel Iduma (b. 1989, NG) completed a Master of Fine Arts in Art Criticism and Writing at the School of Visual Arts in New York after earning his law degree in Nigeria. In addition to his own writing, such as his traveling book A Stranger’s Pose, and editing, he devotes his time to art criticism, which has been published in ART- News, Art in America, and the British Journal of Photography, and has been fea- tured in publications by Aperture, Artforum, The New York Review of Books and the Walther Collection. Iduma was listed as Apollo International Art Magazine‘s 40 un- der 40 Africa in 2020 for the broad social impact of his work. He lives in New York and Lagos.
Since 2018, the overarching theme of the C/O Berlin Talent Award has been New Documentary Strategies. The aim of the award is to promote the critical examinati- on of traditional documentary narratives and to make these perspectives visible in
C/O Berlin Foundation . Amerika Haus . Hardenbergstraße 22–24 . 10623 Berlin
