The prize, endowed with 30,000 Swiss francs, has been awarded for 25 years in the Statements sector of Art Basel by a jury composed of international experts. This year, the jury honored Tiffany Sia and Ahmed Umar.

Baloise acquires works by both artists and donates them to two significant European museums, the MMK Frankfurt and the MUDAM Luxembourg, as announced in a press release on Tuesday.

Visual Meditation

(Image: André Räubig)

Tiffany Sia's installation invites viewers to experience video in unconventional ways. Following in the footsteps of King Hu—a martial film director who shot his films in the Taiwanese landscape—she presents a visual meditation on what Salman Rushdie once called the «imaginary homeland.»

This refers to the (romanticized) view of their homeland that people in the diaspora often maintain. In her essay collection On and Off-Screen Imaginaries, she critically examines popular documentary film.

By projecting the film The Sojourn onto a curved curtain and Antipodes II onto a rearview mirror, she evokes a sense of disruption and emphasizes the materiality of the image while simultaneously introducing a painterly dimension to the film medium.

Debunking Misbeliefs

(Image: André Räubig)

Ahmed Umar creates free poetic and spiritual forms from clichés turned into souvenirs, which arrange themselves like prayer beads in 15 different poses. Various materials, such as wood, plaster, rubber, or metal, combine into handcrafted, supple assemblages that seem to glide through the hands.

In doing so, Ahmed Umar shows how differently Islam is traditionally and practically observed in various geographies, while also debunking the misconception that spirituality forms only in the written word.

The 2024 Baloise Art Prize jury members were:

• Karola Kraus, General Director of MUMOK Vienna and Chair of the Jury
• Marie-Noëlle Farcy, Curator/Head of Collection MUDAM, Luxembourg
• Susanne Pfeffer, Director MMK Frankfurt
• Ann Demeester, Director Kunsthaus Zurich
• Uli Sigg, Swiss collector and patron