Birgit Jürgenssen Award Winner 2024: Ayala Shoshana Guy
The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, together with the BMKÖS and the Hubert Winter Gallery, invites you to the award ceremony of the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize 2024 in the auditorium of the historic Academy building on Schillerplatz.
Welcoming address
Ingeborg Erhart, Vice Rector for Art | Teaching
Presentation of the work
Ayala Shoshana Guy
Laudation
Sabeth Buchmann and Moira Hille, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
Award presentation
Theresia Niedermüller, Head of Section IV Arts and Culture; Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, Civil Service and Sport
The artist Ayala Shoshana Guy has been awarded the Birgit Jürgenssen Prize, endowed with 5,000 euros. Ayala Shoshana Guy's work is characterized by a concise, cross-media visual and narrative language. Her multidisciplinary work combines documentary, fiction and poetry with autobiographical questions and universal problems. The artist lovingly and resolutely exposes herself to the social contexts of everyday life, which she - also using her own body - penetrates phenomenologically, questions artistically and thus expands into new spaces of possibility. This courageous engagement with the creative process is evidence of a remarkable personal and artistic integrity. Her convincing, independent aesthetic in combination with the collage-like animation is also impressive. Her exploration of collective trauma and the human condition should not be overlooked.
In her 19-minute short film I will take your shadow, 2022, for example, the artist processes the story of her grandfather, told from fragments of memory, as an animation. She interweaves his ephemeral memory of fleeing Vienna from National Socialism with her own inner images, creating an outstanding surreal and poetic collage of factual and fictional elements. The choice of black and white drawings and monotypes acts as a filter that creates abstraction and distance, but at the same time a touching intimacy and fragility. The artist's clear and comprehensible attitude towards her creative process and the themes dealt with in her works contributes significantly to the authenticity of her artistic work.
The subject matter of Ayala Shoshana Guy's work is elevated to an abstract level, inviting the viewer to think beyond the immediate representation. Her art is imbued with a fragility between linearity and non-linearity, appealing emotionally and touching profoundly.