Shirin Yousefi wins the 2017 KADIST — Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award

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The Iranian artist Shirin Yousefi is the recipient of the 2017 KADIST — Kunsthalle Zürich Production Award, aimed at enabling young artists based in Switzerland to realize new projects within the institutional context.

Awarded by the non-profit art organization KADIST (Paris, San Francisco) and the contemporary art institution Kunsthalle Zürich since 2012, the €10,000 prize will go towards the production of Yousefi’s The Tales of the Cortex, an artwork engaging with the very current issues surrounding the idea of “borders” and geopolitical spaces. The work will be presented as part of the group exhibition “Speak, Lokal,” set to open on March 4 and running until May 7, 2017 at Kunsthall Zürich.

The artist — who was born in Teheran in 1986 but is a graduate of The École cantonale d'art of Lausanne — was chosen unanimously as the 2017 laureate for her “intrepid approach to artistic research and production.” Yousefi was chosen from a shortlist comprising the duo Marc Asekhame and Teo Schifferli as well as artists Maya Minder and Gian-Andri Töndury. The 2017 jury was made up of Emilie Villez, director of KADIST (Paris), Daniel Baumann, director of Kunsthalle Zürich, artist Bea Schlingenhoff, Fredi Fischli and Niels Olsen, co-directors of exhibitions at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zürich and professor Daniel Morgenthaler of Helmhaus Zürich.

Previous recipients include artists Kaspar Müller,  Flavio Merlo and Ben Rosenthal.