Alice dos Reis wins the EDP Foundation's New Artists Award 2024
Honorable Mention to Sara Chang Yan
The EDP Foundation's New Artists Award 2024, now in its 15th edition, has been given to Alice dos Reis, who will receive the sum of 20 thousand euros to further her artistic career.
According to the jury, Alice dos Reis’ work is notable for ‘a strong creative narrative that combines historical, social and poetic imagination with a very interesting personal dimension and a unique vocabulary that explores diverse media.’ This jury was formed of Vera Pinto Pereira, President of the EDP Foundation, Miguel Coutinho, General Director and Administrator of the EDP Foundation, Nuria Enguita, Artistic Director of MAC/CCB, François Piron, Curator of the Palais de Tokyo Contemporary Art Centre, and Francisco Tropa, Visual Artist.
The jury also gave an Honourable Mention to Sara Chang Yan, who, as an exception, will be awarded 5 thousand euros. In this artist’s work, the jury highlighted the ‘courage with which she challenges the space from the surface out, valuing the minimal gesture that reflects a metaphysical perspective in her artistic practice.’
The jury feels that the work of both artists reveals ‘a notable maturity and a dimension of artistic experimentation, with various surprising elements and a discourse that reveals an openness to the possibilities of thought.’
Around 600 entries were received for this 15th edition, from which the selection jury, composed of Catarina Rosendo, university professor and curator, Luís Silva, curator and director of Kunstalle Lissabon, and Sérgio Mah, assistant director of MAAT and university professor, chose a shortlist of six artists: Alice dos Reis, Evy Jokhova, Francisco Trêpa, Inês Brites, Maja Escher and Sara Chang Yan. The exhibition bringing together the work of these six artists is on display at MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, in Lisbon, until 8 September.
Created in 2000, the EDP Foundation New Artists Award is recognized as one of the most significant in the national art scene, having distinguished the artists Joana Vasconcelos, Leonor Antunes, Vasco Araújo, Carlos Bunga, João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva, João Leonardo, André Romão, Gabriel Abrantes, Priscila Fernandes, Ana Santos, Mariana Silva, Claire de Santa Coloma, Diana Policarpo and Adriana Proganó since its first edition. Over two decades of history, with a growing public dimension, the New Artists Award has seen the participation of dozens of artists, mapping the trajectory of successive generations of the national artistic universe.
Alice dos Reis, born in 1995 in Lisbon, is a visual artist and filmmaker, and has a Master's in fine arts from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2019, she won the Novo Banco Revelation prize for young artists, and in 2018, she won the VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize. She was also a recipient of Foundation Botin Visual Arts Grants (2022-2023), and previously, the Mondriaan Fonds Stipend for Young Artists (2020-2021).
Sara Chang Yan was born in 1982. She lives and works between Lisbon, where she was born, and the Azores. Sara graduated in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon, and studied drawing at Ar.Co – Centro de Arte & Comunicação Visual. In 2015, she was awarded the Visual Arts Prize for Young Creators, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. In 2016, she was selected to participate in the Open Sessions 2016-2017 at The Drawing Center in New York. In 2024, Galeria Madragoa received the Focus Stand Prize for the presentation of Sara Chang Yan's work at Frieze New York.