The Dresden State Art Collections have awarded the Tiberius International Art Award for the first time. The winner is the South African artist Kemang Wa Lehulere who received the Award on Tuesday at the Albertinum in Dresden.

Hartwig Fischer, Director General of Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden: “In presenting the award to Kemang Wa Lehulere we are honouring a highly versatile artist whose works have marked contemporary art. His texts, drawings and performances inspire one another and are closely interwoven. At the same time, his over-sized wall drawings represent the performative art of drawing, vanishing as they do at the end of the exhibition.”

His collage-like works pave the way for new stories with a variety of interpretations, and can at the same time be seen as an archive illustrating the process of remembering and forgetting. Wa Lehulere designed a space of the Galerie Neue Meister with two of his oversized wall installations and 16 drawings. The show was opened with the presentation. The oeuvre of the Johannesburg based artist (born in 1984) includes, among other things, drawing, video art, performance and sculptural installation.

Wa Lehulere’s work has been exhibited around the world and earned numerous prizes, most recently the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts (2012) and the Baloise Art Prize (2013). The artist lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Tiberius International Art Award, launched in 2013 in cooperation with the International Forum for Culture, is awarded to young artists who deal in their work with issues of global development and should be awarded in the future every two years. This will also involve the purchase of a work of art.

www.skd.museum