Nnena Kalu, an artist who uses videotape, plastic sheeting and cardboard tubes to make brightly colored cocoon-like sculptures, on Tuesday won the Turner Prize, one of the art world’s most prestigious awards.
Alex Farquharson, the director of the Tate Britain art museum in London and chair of this year’s prize jury, said in an interview that Kalu was the first artist with an openly discussed learning disability to receive the honor.
The decision to give Kalu the prize was “trailblazing,” Farquharson said, as it represented a “toppling of the wall” between disabled and non-disabled artists. However, he added, Kalu received the award solely for the “sheer quality and verve and beauty” of her abstract art.
Kalu, 59, has exhibited work at the Manifesta art biennale in Barcelona, Spain, and the Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway, and has work in Tate’s collection. She has attracted attention in the art world for achieving that while being autistic and learning disabled with limited verbal communication.
Founded in 1984, the Turner Prize is Britain’s pre-eminent art prize, given annually to either an artist from Britain or a non-British artist who works predominantly in the country. Past winners have included Steve McQueen, Gilbert & George and Lubaina Himid. The award, which comes with prize money of 25,000 pounds, about $33,000, once had a reputation for creating art world stars.
Kalu creates her vast works at ActionSpace, a nonprofit based in London that helps disabled people make art. Charlotte Hollinshead, ActionSpace’s head of artist development, said in a promotional interview for the Turner Prize that the award nomination was “a huge moment” not just for Kalu, but for other people with learning disabilities.
The artist, who was born to Nigerian parents in Glasgow, started making art in the 1980s, and with ActionSpace in 1999. Hollinshead told The Guardian recently that Kalu’s need to make art had always been “off the scale.”
In the interview for the Turner Prize, Hollinshead said that Kalu had initially made pictures by arranging blocks of color in rows. In 2010, Hollinshead has said, Kalu started making sculptures using materials like VHS tapes, colored tape and cardboard that over the years have grown in scope. In 2013, she also started drawing large pictures with repetitive movements that resembled vortices or weather patterns.
She beat three other nominated artists to win the Turner Prize: Mohammed Sami, an Iraqi painter who started his career making murals of Saddam Hussein; Rene Matic, a photographer whose images of friends and family have been compared to the work of Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans; and Zadie Xa, a Canadian artist of Korean heritage who is known for large installations.
Tuesday’s award was bestowed in a ceremony at Bradford Grammar School in northern England, a venue close to the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, which is hosting a free exhibition of work by all four nominated artists through Feb. 22.
Before the ceremony, British art critics had expressed mixed views on Kalu’s art. Waldemar Januszczak, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said that her “lumpy sculpture, fashioned from brightly colored gaffer tape and discarded bubble wrap,” was “up there with the worst art” ever nominated for the Turner Prize.
But Adrian Searle, writing in The Guardian, said that Kalu deserved to win this year’s award. He likened Kalu’s work to the experimental textiles of Sheila Hicks and described her sculptures and drawings as “riotous and rhythmic, purposeful and compelling.”
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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