STA, 24 November 2021 - Slovenian artist Jasmina Cibic has won the 2021 Jarman Award handed out by Film London, worth EUR 10,000. The jury highlighted her projects NADA and The Gift, which was recently screened at the London Film Festival.
Cibic was announced the winner of the award at a special event at the Regent Street Cinema on Tuesday evening.
Based in London, Cibic (1979) works in film, sculpting, performance and installation. She broaches important global issues such as national identity, emergence of a state, soft power and relations within Europe in her works.
She picks monumental architectural locations for the shooting of her films such as the French Communist Party Headquarters, a work by esteemed architect Oscar Niemeyer, or the Palace of Nations in Geneva.
She builds dialogues based on transcripts of political debates and speeches and often includes dance in her films, said Film London, which hands out the award with the support of the Arts Council England and the Whitechapel Gallery.
In her short film The Gift (2021), Cibic presents an allegorical story, a competition among the Artist, Diplomat and Engineer, on which art form would best cure a divided society.
Teaser for 'The Gift', Jasmina Cibic, 2021 from Film London on Vimeo.
Four women, who represent the four liberties from Roosevelt's 1941 Four Freedoms speech - the freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear - talk to the candidates.
"Through unfolding the complex entanglements of art, gender and state power, she encourages viewers to consider the strategies employed in the construction of national culture," Film London says on its website.
Jasmina Cibic in interview: The Foundation of Endeavour, Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, Ljubljana, November 2020 from jasmina cibic on Vimeo.
The film trilogy NADA (2016-2018) studies three star architects of European Modernism and the role that their works have played with the national representation in decisive moments of Europe's history.
They include the unrealised project by Vjenceslav Richter for the Yugoslavian pavilion at the world expo in Brussels in 1958, the Arne Jacobsen City Hall and the 1920s architecture by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Krefeld.
The artist, who exhibits around the world, has received several international awards and represented Slovenia at the 55th Venice International Art Exhibition with the project For Our Economy and Culture.
Inspired by Derek Jarman, the Jarman Award recognises and supports artists working with moving image and celebrates the spirit of experimentation, imagination and innovation in the work of artist filmmakers in the UK.
Last year the award was divided between Michelle Williams Gamaker, Hannah Quinlan and Rosie Hastings, and Jenn Nkiru, Project Art Works, Larissa Sansour and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.
