Future Generation Art Prize 2019: A Decade of the Prize

From the very beginning, Victor Pinchuk's idea to establish the Future Generations Art Prize was, in a sense, revolutionary. No analogous prizes existed. This competition is absolutely democratic — open to everyone. Anyone in the world can apply, and it is completely free. Our prize gave thousands of artists the opportunity to show their work to a truly powerful jury and selection committee.

Moreover, this prize opened many people's eyes to how the art world actually works. I would say that for the artists themselves it was a unique experience. First and foremost, the prize created a Future Generations Art Prize community for them, which includes over a hundred artists.

The winners, in addition to the prize, also received an obvious boost to their careers: the prize brought them popularity, they began exhibiting more. After all, we exhibit these artists not only in Kyiv, and the promotion they gain is not solely thanks to the main prize. The world learns about them also through the Future Generations Art Prize exhibition presented in Venice. This is an additional prize for all nominated artists, of whom there are twenty-one.

In my opinion, it's impossible to say who is the most active. I think that all artists, or at least most of them, simply continue to be active. And we can see that at least 80% of artists from the nominees list have established themselves. And truly established themselves. Even if before participating in this competition they couldn't say that about themselves. So this prize helped them either develop or start their own career at the international level.

We received over 5,800 applications from 158 different countries worldwide. So this is a truly international prize, in the literal sense of the word. Then it was the selection committee's task and mission to choose the nominees. So the 21 nominated artists presented today at PinchukArtCentre are the selection committee's choice. The 2019 competition features 17 different countries. This demonstrates that even when there is no single center from which all artists originate, there is still a global movement that attracts attention and is relevant to a selection committee like ours.

Of course, the competition doesn't start from a specific theme. There is no single idea that unites all artists. First and foremost, we aim to select artists based on their works and their practice. And then, based on what has been selected, we as curators of the prize look at whether there is something that naturally unites them.

One of the tendencies — and of course, it's not new — is identity. Identity as both an individual search and a way of positioning traditions in a rapidly changing globalized world. And the second theme — in my opinion, this is a very interesting and possibly new approach — is "archaeology of the future." That's what we could call it. This path is followed by artists who use high technology to predict what the world might be like in a hundred or a thousand years.

There is always a country that appears in our competition for the first time. Again, it depends on the selection committee. The only thing we can see is that applications come from a very large number of countries, and this number is constantly growing thanks to our partner platforms, our correspondents who promote the prize around the world.

As for the winners — I'm not sure… The holder of the 2014 special prize will be at the opening — that's Nikita Kadan. Since he's from Ukraine, he will come to the opening. But we don't have a tradition of inviting winners to exhibition openings. However, it often happens that we see our prize laureates at the presentation in Venice — since they either represent their national pavilions or have been shortlisted for curatorial exhibitions.