News Six major artists have chosen their protégés for an exciting year of creative and stimulating exchanges as part of the Rolex Artistic Mentoring Programme.
Drawn from the fields of dance, film, literature, music, the dramatic and visual arts, six new protégés will have the privilege of experiencing intense collaboration with six leading artists renowned worldwide in their respective fields. The protégés, all of whom are already exceptional artists in their own right, were chosen by mentors after a year’s search covering the entire globe. The six talented youngsters are:
Sara Fgaier (film): selected by Walter Murch (United States), the Italian film editor, 29, studied history of film at Bologna University and taught herself the elements of her profession. Her first editing job was La bocca del lupo (The Mouth of the Wolf, 2009), the hauntingly poetic, award-winning documentary on which she also worked as archival researcher and first assistant director with director Pietro Marcello. In 2011, she edited Marcello’s Il silenzio di Pelesjan (The Silence of Pelesjan) and Michele Manzolini and Federico Ferrone’s Il treno va a Mosca (The Train to Moscow).
Michal Borczuch (theatre): selected by Patrice Chéreau (France), the Polish theatre director, 32, received Master’s degrees from both Kraków’s Academy of Fine Arts and Ludwik Solski State School of Drama, where he currently lectures. Since 2005, he has been directing plays in Polish theatres and at international cultural festivals, beginning with works by modern Polish playwrights and moving to the classics. He is known for mould-breaking productions that often challenge popular trends and tastes. Among his most recent adaptations are Brand. The City. The Chosen Ones (2011), and Hans, Dora and Wolf (2012), inspired by Sigmund Freud.
Naomi Alderman (literature): selected by Margaret Atwood (Canada), the British author, 37, graduated from Oxford in 1996 and received a Master’s in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2003. Three years later, she published Disobedience, a novel about the tensions and accommodations between religion and modern life, for which she won the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers and, in 2007, was named The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year. Published in ten languages, the book was followed by The Lessons (2010), which investigates the power and problems of wealth, and the forthcoming The Liars’ Gospel, a novel about Jesus from the perspective of the Pharisees. She also writes computer games and recently cocreated Zombies, Run!, a successful iPhone app and audio adventure for runners.
Eduardo Fukushima (dance): selected by Lin Hwai-min (Taiwan), the Brazilian dancer and choreographer, 28, graduated in communication of the physical arts from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo in 2011. He trained with many of Brazil’s leading figures in contemporary dance and created his first solo piece in 2004. More recently, he was acclaimed for Between Contentions (2008) and How to Overcome the Great Tiredness? (2009/2010). Both pieces reflect his research work that starts from gesture and movement.
Dina El Wedidi (music): selected by Gilberto Gil (Brazil), the Egyptian singer/songwriter, 24, started composing songs when she was young and during university in Cairo where she studied oriental languages. El Wedidi’s songs are infused with the political concerns of Egypt. From 2007 to 2010, El Wedidi worked as a singer and actress with the El Warsha Theatre Troupe, exploring Egyptian folklore and performing in such unlikely places as a Cairo prison. During this period (2009 to 2010), she also performed classical Egyptian and Arab songs with the Habayebna band, before establishing her own band in 2011.
Mateo López (visual arts): selected by William Kentridge (South Africa), the Colombian visual artist, 33, spent a year studying architecture at Javieriana University but graduated in fine arts from the University of the Andes. His early studies in architecture equipped him to consider drawing in terms of time and space, and three rather than two dimensions. López is known for setting up his studio in public and for using memories of his personal journeys in his work, which is a trademark of his installations. The installation Viaje sin movimiento (Travelling without movement, 2008-2010) was acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Each Protégé receives 25,000 Swiss francs to support his or her participation in the programme. At the conclusion of the mentoring year, he or she is eligible for an additional 25,000 Swiss francs for the creation of a new work.
Novelty
Architecture will now be added as a seventh category in Rolex’s Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative programme. On 28th August, at the 13th International Architecture Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia - Kazuyo Sejima, Japanese architect, has been appointed as the first architecture mentor.
Her protégé will be nominated in autumn 2012. The young architect will be invited to spend time over a period of a year working on Home For All. The project was created by Sejima and other leading Japanese architects - Toyo Ito, Riken Yamamoto, Hiroshi Naito and Kengo Kuma - to respond to the housing crisis following the devastation caused by the 2011 tsunami in Japan.
Sejima and her partner Ryue Nishizawa won the Golden Lion at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale for the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. In 2010, they won architecture’s highest accolade, the Pritzker Prize, and that year Sejima became the first woman appointed as director of the architecture sector of the Venice Biennale. Among her major works is the 2010 Rolex Learning Center for the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), an architectural landmark in Switzerland, of which Rolex was the lead private funding partner.
September 11, 2012
