Oskar Čepan Award
As part of Call Me If You Need Me, the laureates of the award, who are all winners for 2022, exhibit works in which, from diverse positions, they address the variety of forms of feeling, dive into themselves, talk about healing or, conversely, the impossibility of healing and the need for reconciliation. They reveal pieces of themselves to us to show us that we can perceive the world differently than we are used to, that there is no single or even correct interpretation.
PROFILES OF ARTISTS
Lenka Adamcová is an artist whose main means of expression is sound. In his experimental compositions, he combines voice and text, which he interweaves with different genres from opera to hyperpop. Through complex spatial installations and objects, Peter Kašpar talks about ideas of the future, the interconnectedness of the technological and the biological without the need for binary division. Monika Pascoe Mikyšková mainly creates paintings and drawings in the media and deals with nature in them. Michal Mitro is a versatile artist who uses knowledge from his study of art, psychology and sociology in his work and transforms them into multimedia environments that combine sculpture, sound, light and technology. Ján Skaličan deals with the topic of the climate crisis in his work. In this context, she understands art as a means that has the potential to sound the alarm from other places, such as activists*activists or politicians*politicians.
INTERNATIONAL JURY
The jury was composed of top experts in the field of contemporary visual art: Aaron Cezar (USA/UK; founder and director of the Delfina Foundation in London; in 2021 Turner Prize jury member; ex-curator Hayward Gallery Project Space in London; curator of programs for the public at the 58th Venice Biennale), Amira Gad (EG/FR; director of Light Art Space Berlin; in 2014-2019 curator of the Serpentine Galleries in London; with Hans Ulrich Obrist co-curator of the Hack Space group exhibition at the K11 Art Foundation in Hong Kong) , Edith Jeřábková (CZ; chief curator of PLATO Ostrava; founder of the Institut anskhesti and Are I are-events.org initiatives) and Lilia Kudelia (UA/USA; guest curator at Residency Unlimited in New York; ex-curator of Dallas Contemporary in Texas, Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington and Art Arsenal in Kyiv; in 2017 co-curator of the National Ukrainian Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale).
The history of the Slovak version of the award, which is part of a wider international network of similar awards YVAA – Young Visual Artists Awards, dates back to 1996. This year’s curator is Ema Hesterová.
