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      The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.

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      The Vilcek Foundation Prizes are awarded to foreign-born individuals for extraordinary achievement in the arts and sciences.

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Home > Prizes > Prize Recipients > Nari Ward

Nari Ward

2017 Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts

Location

New York, NY

Title

Nari Ward

Area(s) of Research

Sculpture; repurposed art; recycled art; design, fine art

Education

School of Visual Arts in New York; Hunter College, CUNY; Brooklyn College, CUNY

Country of Birth

Jamaica

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  • nariwardstudio.com

Tags
activism design fine art jamaica recycled recycled art repurposed repurposed art sculpture visual art
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Visual artist Nari Ward has never been entirely comfortable with the typical exhibition framework. While his work has been shown internationally in prominent museums, he has made the theme of his practice the creation of a public conversation, an intimate dialogue with the viewer.

Ward burst onto the New York art scene in 1993 with an artwork titled “Amazing Grace”: 365 abandoned baby strollers arranged with pieces of fire hose into the shape of a ship’s hull in a former firehouse in Harlem as “Amazing Grace,” sung by Mahalia Jackson, played on a loop. The work conveyed a powerful narrative of the neighborhood to its members. Ward says that he always aims to bring to light the history of a place and “bring a kind of urgency of the moment into it, using everyday objects to do that.”

Three large art-pieces each consisting of three large balls stacked atop one another, stand on the floor of a gallery space with other artworks hanging on the walls.

Ward was born in Jamaica, coming of age in the capital of Kingston. He immigrated to the United States with his family, first landed in Brooklyn, and later moving to New Jersey. Drawn to images that contained great emotional impact, Ward found a love for Renaissance master paintings through books at the local library.

At the School of Visual Arts in New York, a professor introduced him to the world of museums and galleries. Another teacher at Hunter College, where Ward took some classes as a non-matriculated student, recommended him to the Vermont Studio Center for a summer residency. That residency would be the first time that Ward could immerse himself in a community of artists and imagine himself having that life as well.

Nari Ward is pictured from the waist-up wearing a yellow shirt, smiling and looking off to the side, with his artworks behind him.

Since then, he’s won several prestigious prizes and is now considered among the most brilliant and insightful practitioners of his generation; he believes that “there is no one truth; there are all these moments that have truth within them.” He recognizes that truth, then he finds a way to tell it.

 

Awards and Accomplishments

  • Joyce Award, the Joyce Foundation
  • Rome Prize, American Academy of Rome
  • Bessie Award
  • American Academy of Arts and Letters (1998)
  • Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1996)
  • The National Endowment for the Arts (1994)

Related Prize Recipients

2017 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts

Carlos Motta

Born in Colombia
Carlos Motta receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts for his engagement, through performance, film, and other media, with the question of representation and democracy, the emotional underpinnings of political awareness, and the tension between dominant accounts of history and marginalized communities.
Portrait of Carlos Motta
2017 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts

Iman Issa

Born in Egypt
Iman Issa receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Fine Arts for exploring, through works of various media, difficult philosophical questions, such as the individual’s relationship to places, figures, and events that are collectively familiar, or the difference between experience and recognition.
Portrait of Iman Issa
2006 Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Born in Bulgaria and Morocco
Christo (1935-2020) and Jeanne-Claude (1935-2009) receive the Vilcek Prize in Fine Arts for capturing the imagination of the world and broadening the popular conception of art with their large-scale works.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude stand in front of their work of art

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