Five contemporary artists on Artes Mundi shortlist

Trevor Paglen is joined by Anna Boghiguian (Canada/Egypt), Bouchra Khalili (Morocco/France), Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria) and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) on the shortlist for the Artes Mundi Prize.

The biennial award is the UK’s largest for contemporary art and sees the winner scoop £40,000.

The winner will be announced in January 2019 following a four-month exhibition of works by the contenders.

Paglen launched a piece of art into distant orbit around Earth in 2012 and recently announced that he will be the first artist in the world to send a sculpture into Space.

Boghiguian’s work was first shown in Catherine David’s Contemporary Arab Representations, beginning in 2003 in Rotterdam.

Attracting much attention and acclaim, her drawings also stirred political debate and controversy.

Khalili’s recent video work The Mapping Journey Project has been exhibited internationally including a solo exhibition at MoMA, New York last year.

Each of her projects can be seen as a platform offered to members of political minority to elaborate, narrate, and share strategies and discourses of resistance.

Nkanga’s work In Wetin You Go Do? is part of the permanent collection at Tate Modern.

Her work explores the social and topographical changes of her environment.

Weerasethakul’s video installations and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous festival prizes, including two prizes from the Cannes Film Festival.

One of the selectors, Nick Aikens, a curator at the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, said: “Artistic practice, at its most compelling and enriching, allows us to see the world and our place within it from new perspectives.

“Each of the five shortlisted artists has consistently done this by pushing the varied media within which they work.”