Tracey Snelling awarded the 2020 Foundwork Artist Prize

Foundwork is excited to announce that Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Tracey Snelling has been awarded the 2020 Foundwork Artist Prize, an annual juried award now in its second year.

As honoree, Snelling will receive an unrestricted USD 10,000 grant and studio visits with each of the distinguished curators, gallerists, and artists on Foundwork’s 2020 jury.

In addition, three artists were chosen for honorable mention on the prize’s 2020 Short List:
-Bellingham, Washington-based painter Andrea Joyce Heimer
-Mexico City-based sculptor and performance artist Melanie McLain
-Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Joiri Minaya

The jury for the 2020 Foundwork Artist Prize included esteemed curators, gallerists, and artists based in Berlin, Omaha, Los Angeles, Tulsa, and Mexico City:
Rachel Adams, Chief Curator and Director of Programs, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
Anat Ebgi, Owner and Director, Anat Ebgi Gallery
Natasha Ginwala, Artistic Director, 13th Gwangju Biennale; Associate Curator, Gropius Bau
Kalup Linzy, performance and video artist
Humberto Moro Deputy Director and Senior Curator, El Museo Tamayo; Adjunct Curator, SCAD Museum of Art
Michael Ruiz, Founder and Managing Director, Future Gallery

“We’re thrilled to honor Tracey Snelling, whose practice has the capacity to connect with many communities around the world, and speaks about the turbulence of urban anxiety and the extenuating living conditions experimented by many,” says Moro. “In the midst of an art world which is increasingly sanitized, it’s fundamental to highlight the practices—like Snelling’s—that deal with these subjects from a generous and empathic point of view.”

“Tracey makes us reconsider the relationship between identity and place—the way we so often project narratives onto one another based on the environments we’re used to,” says Adam Yokell, Foundwork’s Director. “We’re thrilled to help propel her socially resonant work during these polarized times.”

The Foundwork Artist Prize reflects the New York-based platform’s larger purpose to create visibility and engagement for emerging and mid-career artists, and to enable access and discourse between artists, curators, and collaborators, wherever they are based.

In conjunction with the prize, Snelling, Heimer, McLain, and Minaya will each participate in long-form interviews as part of Foundwork’s Dialogues program conducted, respectively, by writers Alina Cohen, Wendy Vogel, Francesca Gavin, and Isabel Flower.

The prize’s inaugural 2019 honoree, Chicago-based artist, curator, and educator Edra Soto, has since been awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculpture Grant, invited to present her work in the State of the Art 2020 exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum, and joined the roster of represented artists at Luis De Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles.

About Tracey Snelling
Tracey Snelling (b. 1970, Oakland, California) works in sculpture, photography, video, sound, performance, and installation to create meticulous environments that capture the essence of a time and place, prompting curiosity and speculation as to the lives of their inhabitants. Ranging in scale from immersive life-sized installations to miniature dioramas, Snelling’s work illuminates the complex relationship between location and identity, and the fine line between observation and storytelling. Snelling has had solo exhibitions at venues such as The Institute for Endotic Research, Berlin; the Swatch Pavilion of the Arsenale, 2019 Venice Biennale; Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam; Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids; and Krupic Kersting, Cologne. She has been included in group exhibitions at venues such as Ludwig Museum, Budapest (forthcoming); Aspen Art Museum; and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Snelling has been an artist-in-residence at the Swatch Artist Residency, Shanghai; the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New Orleans; and Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin, and is a past recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award and a Center for Cultural Innovation Artistic Innovation Grant. Snelling is represented by Cokkie Snoei Gallery in Rotterdam and Studio la Città Gallery in Verona. She lives and works in Berlin.

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