Yto Barrada and Füsun Köksal Win The 4th Edition of Mario Merz Prize in Art and Music Category Respectively

Yto Barrada has been selected as the winner of the Mario Merz Prize fourth edition in the Art category. Füsun Köksal has been selected as the winner of the Mario Merz Prize fourth edition in the Music category.

Yto Barrada was chosen from a shortlist of international contemporary artists including Paolo Cirio, Christina Forrer, Anne Hardy, He Xiangyu, and Koo Jeong A.

Füsun Köksal was selected from a shortlist of composers including Katherine Balch, William Dougherty, Farzia Fallah and Claudia Jane Scroccaro.

Yto Barrada was selected via an open public vote, and a jury comprised of Manuel Borja-Villel (Director of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), Caroline Bourgeois, (Curator Pinault Collection, Paris), Massimiliano Gioni (Artistic Director of the New Museum, New York – Artistic Director of the Fondazione Trussardi, Milan) and Beatrice Merz (President of the Fondazione Merz).

As the winning artist, Barrada will be commissioned to produce a new site-specific solo exhibition at Fondazione Merz, Turin in 2024.

The jury unanimously decided to award Yto Barrada with the following motivation:

“We expect a profound and resonating project from Yto Barrada, because her immensely poetic works touches contemporary concerns with irreverence, wit and originality, informed by her background in political science and history. Barrada has a sustained commitment to creating platforms of critical thinking and community engagement, focusing her work on found archives and micro-histories. Yto Barrada’s research is complex and articulated. Rethinking notions of authenticity, transmission and landscape, are just some of the significant areas the artist investigates, through installations, to textiles, to films, and book making.”

Füsun Köksal was selected via an open public vote, and a jury composed of Helena Winckelman (violinist and composer), Diego Chenna (Professor of Chamber Music at Hochschule für Musik, Freiburg), Thomas Demenga (cellist and composer) and Willy Merz (composer and Orchestra Director).

As the winning composer Köksal will be commissioned to write a piece for string orchestra or for solo instrument and string orchestra as well as a soundtrack for a museum space.

Choosing from the excellent and varied proposals heard in the concert of finalists of the fourth Mario Merz Prize, the music jury decided to award Füsun Köksal’s work with the following motivation:

“In Füsun Köksal’s piece one appreciates an intense and effective dramaturgy combined with a diffused lyricism. The alternation of solos and tutti is masterfully conducted, while the score also demonstrates the composer’s excellent knowledge of instrumental techniques, her overview of the various timbres and their use for poetic purposes. The piece, which develops through violent emotional and sonorous shifts, succeeds in finding an accomplished and evident formal arrangement thanks to the interesting development of the dynamics of the instruments.”