Lisa Oppenheim wins the 2014 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize
www.aimiaagophotographyprize.com
Runners-up David Hartt (Canada); Elad Lassry (Israel/USA); and Nandipha Mntambo (South Africa) also each receive a six-week residency as well as 5,000 CAD to support their artistic practices.
Lisa Oppenheim was born in 1975 in New York City, where she lives and works. Oppenheim’s photographs and videos, including those that are a part of the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2014 Exhibition, are composed of images and materials from the recent and not-so-recent past that she re-processes and transforms through various historical and contemporary techniques. Her process often begins online, where she sources images and objects that she reinterprets photographically using both analogue and digital technologies. Through this approach, the process itself becomes source material, as Oppenheim gives photographic images new forms and new contexts. Recent solo exhibitions include Forever is Composed of Nows, Kunsterverin in Hamburg; From Abigail to Jacob (Works 2004–2014), Kunstverein in Graz; and Heaven Blazing into the Head, The Approach Gallery, London. Oppenheim graduated with an MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College in 2002.
The shortlist was announced on August 13, 2014, after being selected by an international jury comprising lead juror Sophie Hackett, the AGO’s associate curator of photography; Okwui Enwezor, Nigerian-born, German-based scholar, curator, writer and director of Haus der Kunst, Munich; and New York–based photo and video artist Laurie Simmons. Voting began that same day at aimiaagophotographyprize.com and on the Prize’s Facebook page. The public also had the opportunity to vote at the AGO inside the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2014 Exhibition, which remains on view at the AGO until January 5, 2015.
For more information on the winner and our three finalists, please visit www.aimiaagophotographyprize.com.
