Only the second South Asian to win the UK’s most high profile art prize in 40 years, the Glasgow born trained silversmith is someone whose art is highly accessible…
TURNER PRIZE winning artist Jasleen Kaur chose to focus her winning speech on what was happening outside Tate Britain – drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians…
And in her first broadcast interview since being awarded the Turner on Wednesday morning (December 4), she spoke about the award being “overwhelming” and said she wasn’t too caught up in the individual drama of who wins awards.
“Maybe everyone goes in trying to protect themselves a little bit,” she told the Today BBC Radio 4 programme’s Amol Rajan.
Quizzed about her most widely recognised artwork – the Ford Escort car covered in a giant doily cloth – and interpreted as references to her father’s first car and many Asians coming to the UK to work in the textile industry, she told Rajan she was extremely grateful for Scottish government funding which allowed her to pursue her artistic career and said that her practice was a “kind of cut and paste. That’s how I make, that’s how I understand the world. That’s how I understand time and histories. I shove things together.”
On Tuesday evening (December 4), around 150 protesters had gathered to call for the Tate to sever ties with donors who are connected to Israel, amidst the ongoing conflict which is now in a second year and has left many innocent Palestinians dead. Recent estimates put the number of total deaths at close to or around 45,000.
As Kaur took to the stage after being declared the winner, she said: “I want to echo calls of protestors outside. I’ve been wondering why artists are required to dream up liberation in the gallery but when that dream meets life we are shut down.
“I want the separation between the expression of politics in the gallery and the practice of politics in life to disappear.
“I want the institutions to understand that if you want us inside you need to listen to us outside.” She called for an arms embargo and ended her speech, saying: “Free Palestine”.
She also referred to the letter signed by 1,200 artists and those working in the arts for the Tate to disconnect from two of its funding partners with links to the state of Israel.
The Tate has not publicly reacted to this, to date.
It said, describing Kaur’s artistic practice – that her work “explores how cultural memory is layered in the objects and rituals that surround us”.
Tate said it was a way of “making sense of what is out of view or withheld”.
And addresses subjects often hidden or obscured from view – with some themes relating “to the impacts of imperialism on the narratives and histories we inherit”.
Tate added: “She cuts and pastes objects from everyday life into the gallery to reimagine tradition and agreed myths.”
The win came for her exhibition ‘Alter Altar’ at The Tramway Glasgow (March 31-October 8 2023). Curated by Claire Jackson, it consisted of sculpture, installation, print based work and sound. The latter was embedded in some of the works themselves and included worship bells, Sufi Islamic devotional music, Indian harmonium, pop tracks and a “polyphony of references and experiences that reflected the pluralities of religious identities, lineages of community and resistance” – as described by the Tate.
Pic: David Parry/PA Media Assignments
From a Sikh background, she studied Silversmithing and Jewellery at Glasgow School of Art in 2008 and Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery at the Royal College of Art, London in 2009-10.
Acclaimed actor James Norton presented the Turner Prize to Kaur. She also receives a £25,000 cash prize.
Norton has worked across television, film and theatre and is probably best known for his role in the Bafta-award winning BBC crime series, ‘Happy Valley’ and will be seen too in Netflix’s ‘Joy’ which premiered at London Film Festival earlier this year. It tells the story about the creation of IVF treatment.
Top picture: David Parry/PA Media Assignments
The Turner Prize Exhibition continues till February 16 2025 – Millbank, London SW1P 4RG.
https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-prize-2024
