Announcing the 2022 Committed Artist Award Winners

From the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation we are very happy to announce the winners of the second edition of the Committed Artist Award that reaffirms our dedication to all disciplines of art, underlining its value as a driver of change, citizenship and social transformation. An international jury has selected Eric Minh Cuong Castaing, Valérie Mréjen and Mohamed El Khatib (French artists), Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroonian artist living in France), Basurama and José Suárez ‘El Torombo’ (Spanish artists) who will receive an endowment of 30,000 euros in recognition of their work.

The multiple crises we are currently experiencing – climate emergency, health crisis, weakening of democracies, etc. – have highlighted the serious shortcomings and blockages that affect our world and that urgently call for inspiration for change. For this reason, with the Committed Artist Award, which we inaugurated from the Foundation in 2020, we want to highlight and recognize the civic commitment of those artists who work providing solutions to different social problems to achieve more ecological, inclusive societies that allow development in full.

There are many initiatives that materialize thanks to artists who open their field of work to areas such as social, education, the environment or the social and solidarity economy. This Award is part of the actions to enhance and support figures who conceive their work in dialogue with society and seeking, precisely, to have a social impact. Beyond the award, the objective is to promote dialogue, exchanges of experiences and ideas among the winners and also with society.

The five artists awarded in 2022

The winners of the first edition were the Frenchmen Neïl Beloufa and Patrick Bouchain and the Spaniards Cristina Pato, Santiago Cirugeda and Julio Jara. In this new edition, the Prize is awarded to five new artists who explore disciplines such as urban planning, dance, theatre or music from the social transformation of the communities in which they work.

Previously proposed and shortlisted by a Franco-Spanish nominating committee, these artists have finally been chosen by a volunteer jury that has taken into account creators who carry out their actions both in Spain and France, as well as internationally. Each of them will receive an endowment of 30,000 euros in recognition of their work.

The winners of the 2022 Committed Artist Award are:

Basurama – Garbage as a potential resource for social transformation

Art, architecture and the environment are the three pillars on which the activity of Basurama is based, a collective that focuses its area of study and action on the city and the complex processes that coexist in it. With its projects, Basurama aims to study phenomena inherent to the mass production of real and virtual waste in consumer society, providing new visions that act as generators of thought and attitude and that allow new possibilities to be built. Among its different initiatives, ‘ReLabs (Living Waste Laboratory)‘ stands out, which reviews the current waste management system of the Madrid City Council to make it more efficient and better adapt it to the new current situation.

Eric Minh Cuong Castaing – Inclusive Dance as a Form of Communication

Choreographer and visual artist, Eric Minh Cuong Castaing combines dance, images, sound and new technologies with avenues of exploring the experience of fragility, loss of mobility and the importance of gestures to connect and communicate with others. Its transdisciplinary practice translates into choreographic pieces, films, installations and performances, in which professional and amateur dancers participate, of all ages, with disabilities or in situations of vulnerability. The ‘In situ in socius‘ approach, which the artist has been developing over time, proposes a new way of dancing together and stresses the need for human gesture in a society that aspires to be more inclusive.

Valérie Mréjen and Mohamed El Khatib – Art in a home for dependent elderly people

Valérie Mréjen, novelist, video artist and visual artist, and Mohamed El Khatib, author and theatre director, have teamed up to create ‘LBO’, a real art centre inserted in a public residence for dependent elderly people. A true model of shared creation, this new space, inaugurated in June 2022, opens a dialogue between residents, artists, caregivers and cultural institutions. By placing itself at the intersection between art, care and the elderly, the project reinvents the limits and definition of what we understand by an artistic space.

José Suárez, ‘El Torombo’ – Flamenco as an engine of change and overcoming adversity

With flamenco as his flagship, the modus vivendi of José Suárez, alias ‘El Torombo’, has consisted of participating, mainly as a palmero, in all those performances for which he was required by other musicians or dancers, making his world tours compatible with his work as an educator and director of a flamenco academy and with his project ‘Fuera de serie‘’. Through it, she works with young people in disadvantaged situations to show them that they can overcome their own context and that art is an important driver of change for this.

Barthélémy Toguo – Artistic action of a social, agricultural and environmental

natureThrough his way of orchestrating gesture, drawing and colour, the work of the French-Cameroonian Barthélémy Toguo transmits a formidable vital energy, endowed with infinite poetry and imagery. Among the inexhaustible sources from which both his work and his struggles draw are his life experience, the history of Africa or the current situation of his time. In 2000 he embarked on the development of ‘Bandjoun Station‘, a residence and exchange space located in the western high plateaus of Cameroon. This new model of artistic action open to the world, marked by its profoundly social, agricultural and environmental character, is fully in line with the concerns of our contemporary societies.

The jury of the Committed Artist Award 2022

The jury of the second edition of the Committed Artist Award was composed of:

• Stéphanie Aubin, choreographer, director of the Maison des Métallos.
• Costa Badía Melis, artist and cultural manager specialising in functional diversity.
• Patrick Bouchain, architect and urban planner, winner of the 2020 Committed Artist Award.
• Jesús Carrillo, professor of History and Art Theory at the UAM, member of the Orientation Committee of the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation.
• Juan Casero, co-director of the Onfire Flamenco Festival and music producer.
• Elvira Dyangani Ose, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA).
• Denis Laborde, Director of Research at the CNRS and Director of Studies at the EHESS.
• Graziella Niang, director of the Jazz à Tours festival.
• Pierre Oudart, general director of the Marseille-Mediterranean School of Art and Design.
• Cristina Pato, musician, winner of the 2020 Committed Artist Award.
• Guillermo Solana, artistic director of the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum.
• Barbara WOLFFER, administrator of Panthéon – Centre des Monuments Nationales.