New York, January 6, 2014 — In an unprecedented move, the Vilcek Foundation announced today a three-way tie for first place in its annual dARTboard Call for Entries in Digital Art, open to foreign-born artists working in the realm of new media art. The foundation will triple the prize money to $15,000, to be divided equally between the three artists, and the exhibition will feature the innovative works of Canadian-born Nicholas Hanna, South Korean–born Ha Na Lee, and Salvadoran-born Fernando Orellana in the dARTboard digital art space on Vilcek.org beginning today.
The dARTboard, launched in 2012 on Vilcek.org, was created to celebrate the accomplishments of groundbreaking foreign-born artists who use computer-based technologies in their work. The three artists— Mr. Hanna, Ms. Lee, and Mr. Orellana—were chosen from an extremely competitive pool of applicants who submitted work during the dARTboard Call for Entries this past fall, which was juried by an expert in the field.
Working with everything from bubbles to stairwells to the paranormal, these three luminaries represent a new generation of immigrant artists whose work reshapes our perceptions of installation art and utilizes computers and software as a central component.
For the dARTboard, Mr. Hanna will present Bubble Device #2, a software-driven robotic bubble machine that sparks within the viewer, no matter what age, a childlike sense of curiosity and wonder. Ms. Lee, for her part, will showcase Vestiges, Part II, a sensor-rigged stairwell in which she has created a liminal space between the psychological and the physical. And finally, Mr. Orellana will exhibit Shadows, a series of works meant to be used posthumously. Shadows features objects recently purchased from estate sales that are then measured for changes in temperature, infrared, and electromagnetic readings—three things commonly associated with paranormal activity.
Regarding these three talented artists, Executive Director Rick Kinsel says, “Approaching digital art from such unique standpoints, these three diverse visionaries, who hail from all over the world, represent the pioneering community of foreign-born artists defining the future of new media art. Whether it’s with mega bubbles, an adaptive stairwell, or digitally detected ghosts, these artists push beyond the traditional view of computer-based art and integrate digital technologies as a fluid extension of their materials.”
Each year, the Vilcek Foundation awards a $5,000 honorarium to the artist selected to exhibit his or her digital creations on the dARTboard.
NICHOLAS HANNA was born in Montreal, Canada, in 1982. He attended Yale University, where he obtained a Master of Architecture in 2009. Afterward, he spent two years living in Beijing, where his activities transitioned from architecture to art. He completed his first two projects there—Candle Light, an interactive light space, and Water Calligraphy Device, a bicycle that writes Chinese characters using droplets of water deposited onto the street. He left China in 2011 to attend UCLA, where he expanded his work and completed his MFA in 2013. Mr. Hanna currently works in Los Angeles.
HA NA LEE was born in Seoul, South Korea. Ms. Lee works primarily in the mediums of video, performance, installation art, and experimental film. Her artwork focuses on portraying an individual’s experience of psychological and physical trauma in a poetic narrative. She is especially interested in exploring these traumas by creating bodily and cinematic experiences and spatializing fragmented narratives in the form of interactive and immersive environments. Ms. Lee’s work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions, and her films have been screened in the United States and internationally in South Korea, Japan, Puerto Rico, Spain, and the Netherlands. She is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Goldberger Graduate Research Fellowship at Stony Brook University in Stony Brook, New York, and others. She is currently a PhD candidate at DXARTS, the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media, and she lives and works in Seattle.
FERNANDO ORELLANA was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, and currently lives in Troy, New York. He uses new and traditional media as a way of transmitting concepts that range from generative art to paranormal research to sociopolitical commentary. His artwork has been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, as well as internationally at venues in Australia, Germany, Spain, El Salvador, Ireland, and Chile. He is the recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Arts and the Full Fellowship Award at the Vermont Studio Center. He earned a BFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Ohio State University. He currently holds the position of Associate Professor of Digital Art at Union College in Schenectady, New York.