Baloise Holding AG
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25th Baloise Art Prize awarded at Art Basel 2024
11.06.2024 / 15:00 CET/CEST
Basel, 11 June 2024. The Baloise Art Prize has been awarded to Tiffany Sia and Ahmed Umar. The prize of CHF 30,000 will be presented at the Statements sector of Art Basel by a jury of international experts. The prize includes the acquisition by Baloise of works by the award winners, which are donated to two important museums in Europe: the MMK Frankfurt and the MUDAM, Luxembourg.
Tiffany Sia
Tiffany Sia’s installation invites viewers to experience video in an unconventional way. In the course of following the traces of King Hu – a martial film director who shot his movies in the Taiwanese countryside – she presents a visual meditation on the notion of what Salman Rushdie once called the "imaginary homeland"; that is, the (romanticised) view of their native country often cultivated by people living in the diaspora. In her collection of essays, On and Off-Screen Imaginaries, she critically examines vernacular documentary cinema. By projecting the film "The Sojourn" on a curved curtain and "Antipodes II" on a rear-view mirror, she conjures the feeling of disruption and underscores the materiality of the image while also introducing a painterly dimension to the medium of film.
Tiffany Sia, *1988, lives in New York City, NY, USA
Statements Stand M14, Felix Gaudlitz gallery, Vienna, Austria
Ahmed Umar
Ahmed Umar takes souvenirs that have hardened into clichés and transforms them into poetic and spiritual forms, lined up like prayer beads in 15 different poses. He combines materials, such as wood, plaster, rubber or metal, to create smooth, handmade assemblages that seem to glide through one’s hands. In this way, Ahmed Umar demonstrates the complexity of Islam, the diversity of ways in which it is handed down and practiced in different regions, while at the same time drawing attention to the mistaken conviction that spirituality is confined to the written word.
Ahmed Umar, *1988, lives in Oslo, Norway
Statements Stand M17, OSL contemporary gallery, Oslo, Norway
This year’s jury includes:
Karola Kraus, General Director MUMOK Vienna and Chair of the Jury
Marie-Noëlle Farcy, Curator/Head of collection MUDAM, Luxemburg
Susanne Pfeffer, Director MMK Frankfurt
Ann Demeester, Director Kunsthaus Zürich, Zurich
Uli Sigg, Collector and patron of the arts
During Art Basel 2024 (from 13 to 16 June 2024) all the winners will be presented at the Baloise Studio (Hall 2.2).
The focus is firmly on the future at Baloise. We aim to make tomorrow more straightforward, safer and more carefree for our customers, and we are taking responsibility for this today. Baloise is more than just a traditional insurance company. Through our smart finance and insurance solutions, we offer a complete service package. Dependable support, reliable cooperation and trust-based relationships are key aspects of our stakeholder interaction. We take care of financial matters so that our customers can concentrate on the important things in their lives and can find inspiration in the everyday. Baloise, a European company founded more than 160 years ago, currently employs 8,000 people at its headquarters in Basel (Switzerland) and across its subsidiaries in Belgium, Germany and Luxembourg. Our services generated a business volume of around CHF 8.6 billion in 2023. Baloise Holding Ltd shares (BALN) are listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange.
Baloise Holding AG is a Switzerland-based company that offers insurance and retirement solutions to private individuals and companies. The Company combines insurance and banking services and is active in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The Company diversifies its activities into Non-life, Life, Asset Management & Banking and Other Activities business segments. The Nonlife segment includes accident and health insurances, as well as products of the liability, motor, property and marine sectors. The Life segment includes capital-forming insurance and risk covers, among others. The Asset Management & Banking operating segment encompasses banking-related areas of asset management as well as the actual banking area. The Other Activities segment comprises equity investment companies, real-estate firms and financing companies.