Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory 2020
Zdenka Badovinac, curator, art writer, and director of Ljubljana’s Moderna galerija is named Igor Zabel Award 2020 laureate.
The jury has awarded Zdenka Badovinac the Igor Zabel Award for Culture and Theory 2020 for her outstanding institutional leadership as the director of the Moderna galerija/Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM) in Ljubljana as well as for her radical curatorial work and significant contributions as a writer and editor to international discourses on the geopolitics of contemporary art in Eastern Europe and global art history. In addition to the award in the amount of EUR 40,000, three grants, each of EUR 12,000 are being given. Igor Zabel Award Grant 2020 recipients selected by the jury are Slavcho Dimitrov (Skopje) and Katalin Erdődi (Vienna/Budapest). The third grant recipient is selected by the laureate; Zdenka Badovinac selected Ivana Bago (Zagreb).
Jury 2020:
Antony Gardner, art historian, Oxford • Šejla Kamerić, artist, Sarajevo • Franciska Zólyom, curator and director of the GfZK – Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig
Nominators 2020:
Pawel Althamer • Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez • Vjera Borozan • Mira Gakjina • Herwig Höller • Eva Khachatryan • József Mélyi • Deimantas Narkevičius • Sven Spieker • Raluca Voinea
The award ceremony and presentation of the laureate and grant recipients was streamed on 4 December 2020. The international conference The Entire World as Our World and the discussion Borderline Syndrome and Energies of Defence also took place on the occasion of the 2020 award programme.
Laureate 2020
The Igor Zabel Award 2020 jury recognizes Zdenka Badovinac as one of the most important and rigorous locally rooted and globally connected professionals in the field of cultural production in recent decades. Badovinac became the director of Moderna galerija in Ljubljana in 1993. According to the jury, since she was appointed to this post, and through her curatorial innovations, Zdenka Badovinac has made Ljubljana’s Moderna galerija into one of the most progressive, critical, and referential art institutions worldwide. The jury also emphasizes Badovinac’s important contribution to new paradigms in art theory, the politics of art, curatorship, practices of exhibiting, institutional critique, and strategies of solidarity within the (institutional) contemporary art field. Her remarkable achievements prove that the tremendous subversive potential for radical change lies not only in professional expertise, but also in combining this expertise with personal devotion, a sense of solidarity, and a commitment to building alliances.
Grant recipients 2020
Grant recipient according to the jury's selection:
→ Slavcho Dimitrov (Skopje), activist, cultural theorist, and curator, in recognition of his contributions to reimagining the cultural and social life of the Western Balkan region, and for bringing LGBTQIA+ and women’s rights and struggles to the heart of that vision. As marginalized communities face increasing repression and violence, Slavcho Dimitrov’s work across art and activism exemplifies how we might respond productively and urgently to this situation.
Grant recipient according to the jury's selection:
→ Katalin Erdődi (Vienna/Budapest), curator, dramaturg, and cultural worker, in recognition of her locally embedded and inclusive curatorial practice, distinguished by its scope as well as its critically reflexive and joyful qualities. Informed by a variety of artistic and activist methods, her work aims to enhance bottom-up social participation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, trigger processes of democratization, and raise ecological awareness.
Grant recipient according to the laureate's selection:
→ Ivana Bago (Zagreb), curator, art historian, and art writer, in recognition of her excellence and insistence on the art historical research, writing, and exhibiting of Yugoslav and Eastern European art in the past decade as well as for her remarkable contribution to the formation of new approaches to writing and curating in this region.
Photo: Nada Žgank