Descripción del Premio
In its 13th edition, FUSO – Lisbon International Video Art Festival 2021, received more than 220 Open Call applications for the Acquisition Award Fundação EDP/MAAT. Under the motto “Na Fronteira” (On the Border), the artistic director of the festival, Jean-François Chougnet, selected 16 finalist works by Portuguese and foreign artists residing in Portugal. This year’s awards jury was composed by artist Irit Batsry, historian Isabel Nogueira, film director Susana Sousa Dias, the winner of last year’s award, film director Welket Bungué, and by Margarida Chantre, head of Fundação EDP Art Collection.
The jury wishes to thank the active and dedicated participation of the candidates that subjected their applications to this year’s festival, and to congratulate the finalists for their nomination and the quality of the work they presented. We are very pleased by the growing number of applications that the Open Call has been receiving in recent years. Above all, we must mention the great quality of the work that was brought to us, that makes us realize that the field of video art in Portugal holds its own artistic ground, consolidated over the years with much talent.
For this reason, the jury decided to reintroduce an honorable mention. We wanted to make a reference to the video that revealed to us an acute and meaningful view, in a visual composition, of invisible border lines that, between the intentional monochrome imagery and the compass of sound, leads us to a fluid migration between spaces and the primordial elements that occupy them. As the authors declare: “contents, matters and sensations pollinate, while river, wind, dunes, and a bird and a stone, breathe’.
This year’s honorable mention is awarded to three artists — Helena Inverno, Verónica Castro and Bouchra Ouizguen — for the video ‘Transhumance’ (2019).
The Jury awards this year a work that, by its unique and distinctive visual and sound approach, presents the creation of an analogy of the unobservable and incomprehensible that, in this way — a video recording —, takes shape and becomes discernible to those who see it. Its manifest self-reflexive and personal qualities refer us to the metaphor of the borders that we all cross in the present time. It is a work that impels us, from the first moment, to dive, to make a leap from real places to the fluid and dreamlike unreality, between what is immediately recognizable to us and what remains without apparent reference of meaning. In the elaborate succession of allegorical images and a text built in fluid cadence which accompanies them, we try to grasp a palpable reality, but wander in an intermediate space, eventually returning to what we are inside. Without limits.
It is thus with great pleasure and recognition that we announce that the artists Sofia Arriscado and Constanza Givone are the winners of the Acquisition Award Fundação EDP, with the video “Lapso” (2021).
Jury’s Choice
EDP Foundation/MAAT Acquisition Award
Sofia Arriscado and Constanza Givone, with the video ‘Lapso’ (2021).
Jury’s Choice
Honorable Mention
Helena Inverno, Verónica Castro and Bouchra Ouizguen, with the video ‘Transhumance’ (2019)
Audience Choice
Ar.Co Incentive Award
Tânia Diniz, with the video ‘Passagem’ (2021)
A jury, presided over by Margarida Chantre, will select the best video.
Jean-François Chougnet is responsible for the previous selection of the videos in the running.
In 2021, the EDP/MAAT Foundation maintained its partnership with the FUSO Open Call – Lisbon International Annual Video Art Festival, through its granting of the EDP/MAAT Foundation Acquisition Award for the jury’s selection of the best work, in the amount of 2.500€.
The public will also be invited to vote on pre-selected videos at a public session at the MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology’s garden on the 26th of August, 2021. The author(s) of the work, selected by the public, will be awarded the Ar.Co – Art and Visual Communication Center’s Incentive Award, consisting of a one year scholarship for the “Individual Project” at the Cinema and Moving Image department of the school.