A press conference and forum of 2016 CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award and the 10th Artist Award were held at the CAFA Art Museum on the afternoon of November 5, “Best Artist”, “Best Young Artist” and “Outstanding Achievement” were awarded to the artists Cao Fei, He Xiangyu and Xu Bing.

As the longest-standing contemporary art award in China, the CCAA has reached its 19th year. Behind the glory and financial support provided to the artists, the jury’s intense selecting process is the most conflicting and fascinating part of every session. How to create and undertake the fair even just the artistic evaluating mechanism is not only the pursuit of the CCAA, but also an important issue for many museums and art institutions throughout the world to constantly think of, discuss and practice in the process of forming an exhibition and collection.

Introduction to the 10th Artist Award of CCAA      

Chinese Contemporary Art Award (abbr. CCAA) was founded by Swiss collector Uli Sigg, who is one of the most important collectors of Chinese contemporary artists from 1997. As an independent, not-for-profit organization, Chinese Contemporary Art Award is specifically granted to Chinese artists and art critics demonstrating excellent talent in art creations, in recognition of their outstanding creations and comments, and strives to help the public understand and appreciate Chinese contemporary art thus making a great contribution to contemporary Chinese culture. In addition to the awards, CCAA also carries out extensive publicity and holds art exhibitions. Since the artists were first awarded the prize in 1998, it has finished the 9th selection of artist awards and it is the 10th CCAA for the Artist Award.

The 10th CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award selects the “Best Artist”, “Best Young Artist” and “Outstanding Achievement” from the 55 artists nominated by the Nomination Committee and 9 artists are nominated for the public nomination. “Best Artist” is awarded to the artist who makes an outstanding creativity in contemporary art circles in the last 2 years; “Best Young Artist” was awarded to the artists aged 30 or even younger, and have demonstrated outstanding creativity in the past two years; “Outstanding Achievement” is awarded to the artists who have continued to create and have a long-term influence and outstanding contribution to Chinese contemporary art over a long period of time. The CCAA respectively offers $ 10,000 and $ 3,000 to the winners of “Best Artist” and “Best Young Artist”.

The jury is composed of 7 members, including 3 Chinese judges and 4 foreign judges. Chairman of the jury is Liu Li Anna.

List of Chinese and foreign judges (in alphabetical order):

1 Bernard Blistène, Director, Center Pompidou, France

2 Chris Dercon, Honorary Curator of the Tate Modern, UK

3 Feng Boyi, an independent curator, art critic, and Artistic Director of He Xiangning Art Museum

4 Peng De, Professor from Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, Doctoral Tutor

5 Suhanya Raffel, a curator of Hong Kong M +

6 Uli Sigg, a founder of CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Foundation, collector

7 Yin Jinan, Dean of School of Humanities, CAFA, Professor, Ph.D. supervisor

The seven members of the committee of the CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award in 2016 are senior scholars and curators of contemporary Chinese and international contemporary art. CCAA’s longstanding tradition of Western and Chinese art that is diversified and of an high-standard in the eyes of international academic jury has long been the basis for ensuring fairness, impartiality and openness, and it is also the key to revealing the inclusion and academic quality.

In addition, the CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award is co-organized by the 6th “CCAA-CAFA Joint Forum” with the CAFA Art Museum on the day of the awards – “How Do Art Museum Choose Artists – Chinese Art Institutions Collecting Non-Native Art and Foreign Art Institutions Collecting Chinese Art”, discuss different standards of art, especially the non-local art exhibitions and collections, between the Chinese and Western art museums?

Among the participating honored guests of the forum of the 2016 CCAA Chinese Contemporary Art Award for the 10th Artist Award, it includes Bernard Blistène, Director, Center Pompidou, France, Chris Dercon, Honorary Curator of the Tate Modern, UK, Suhanya Raffel, a curator of Hong Kong M +, and also the curators that are active in the art scene at home and abroad, such as Feng Boyi, Peng De, Yin Jinan, together with President of CAFA Fan Di’a, Director of CAFA Art Museum Wang Huangsheng in order to unfold an open, serious and intense discussion on a series of problems related to the theme, and the forum which was presided over by the Chairman of the jury of CCAA Liu Li Anna.

The topics were discussed by the international judges in the forum include: the ways and means by which art museums choose non-Western artists and works of art, Western art museums have changed the understanding of Chinese contemporary art in the past 10 years; Chinese judges and Fan Di'an had discussions on the topics: Chinese art museums and the exhibition of Western art, the relationship between collections and the local artistic context, and the distribution of local and international artists’ exhibitions and collections. Chinese and Western judges and the honored guests participating in the forum also explored new issues such as how to link the new international collections to the museum’s collection system.

Edited by Lin Jiabin, translated by Chen Peihua and edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO

Photo by Yang Yanyuan/CAFA ART INFO