The 1998 Prince Claus AwardsThe Prince Claus Fund honoured sixteen laureates on 9 December 1998 at the Royal Palace Amsterdam. All laureates are artists and intellectuals of great creativity and innovative spirit. They promote elements which would otherwise receive little attention, value things which are barely appreciated by others, make links which have never been made before, preserve what has almost been lost, and say what otherwise would have remained unsaid. They deserve the highest esteem for their commitment to their work and to bringing about positive changes in their own surroundings.The Prince Claus Fund (The Netherlands) supports activities in the field of culture and development by granting awards, funding, and producing publications, as well as by financing and promoting intercultural exchanges and innovative projects. The annual Prince Claus Awards are presented to artists or intellectuals working in the field of culture and to organizations engaged in cultural research or the promotion and dissemination of culture.
The Principal 1998 Prince Claus Award went to the Art of African Fashion represented by three leading figures in that field: Alphadi (Niger); Oumou Sy (Senegal), and Tetteh Adzedu (Ghana). Amongst the thirteen other Prince Claus Awards (to artists in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America) were five Asian laureates.
- Heri Dono (Indonesia)
The work of Heri Dono (1960, Jakarta) includes drawings, paintings, installations, and performances. It addresses social and political issues through absurdist imagery. His work displays great openness towards art forms which are outside the accepted disciplines of the visual arts: he uses cartoon-like elements taken from the wayang kulit, the Indonesian shadow theatre. Heri Dono addresses a wide variety of issues, from famine to unemployment, drugs, ecological hypocrisy, and political violence. His work has its origins in the Indonesian situation but considers phenomena, which are recognized world-wide.
- Jyotindra Jain (India)
Jyotindra Jain (1943, Indore) is a brilliant scholar and an innovator in the field of museology. Since taking over the directorship of the Crafts Museum in Delhi in 1984, he has used it as the vehicle for an extraordinary task: reviving traditional arts and handicrafts of India, including those from the tribal areas. Jyotindra Jain breaks down prejudices concerning crafts and art, tradition and modernity, 'low' and 'high' culture. Jain proposes and practises a different model, in which traditional and folk art co-exists and mingles with the modern, industrial present.
- Redza Piyadesa (Malaysia)
Redza Piyadasa (1939, Kuantan) devotes himself both to the practice and to the theory of art. During the sixties and seventies he filled a serious vacuum, at a time when there was scarcely any debate on the subject of art history or art criticism in his country. In his many publications, both in English and in Malay, he examines the contexts of art and their significance for the construction of artistic traditions and artistic values. His interest is centred on modern Asian art, which he places in relation to traditional Asian art forms and Western contemporary art.
- Kumar Shahani (India)
Kumar Shahani (1940) makes films of great integrity. His cinema is complex, demanding, uncompromising, and avant-garde. Shahani has worked on the language of cinema through a continuous exploration of the traditional art forms, such as classical music and dance, the classical Indian epic, the modern epic, and contemporary literature. Increasingly in India, as in the rest of the world, genuine culture is having to yield to market pressure. Despite this, Kumar Shahani still holds on to his idealism and on his own honest views on modernity and globalization.
- Tiang Zhuang Zhuang (PR China)
Tian Zhuang Zhuang (1952) is a courageous film director. He belongs to what is known as the Fifth Generation of Chinese film-makers, which launched a new wave of cinema in the mid-eighties. Tian Zhuang Zhuang explores the boundaries of Chinese cultural space; his films are concerned with and reflect real life. Tian justifies the production of films that might not suit mass tastes. He was banned from film-making in China following the release of 'The Blue Kite' (1993), a film commenting on recent Chinese history and politics. He continued, however, to devote his efforts to the Chinese film industry and during the past years has helped in the realization of productions by other film-makers, particularly younger ones. Recently he has been given the opportunity to start on a new project of his own.
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