Seven international artists, whose work is exhibited in five venues across Wales, have a chance to win the UK's largest international contemporary art prize. For its 10th anniversary, Artes Mundi is venturing beyond its usual Cardiff venue, presenting the work of seven artists in five venues across Wales, including the capital. It is also partnering London's Bagri Foundation for the first time.
The artists in competition include:
Mounira Al Solh, who lives between Lebanon and the Netherlands. She displays artworks dedicated to Syrian refugees, as part of a series of 500 portraits accompanied by conversations she had with them in 2012, when the war in Syria broke out.
Kurdish-born artist Rushdi Anwar, who also exhibits at Cardiff National Museum, looks at the last hundred years of colonialism in the Middle East in his solo show. One room contains archival documents, with an old radio broadcasting a mixture of colonial speeches and propaganda from 1916 (the Sykes-Picot agreements).
"The maps of the region were drawn in a London office by people who didn't understand the cultural context, the different ethnic groups or the complexities of the region," explains the artist (The National).
A second room shows twelve boxes, each with a burnt photo of a destroyed church in Bashiqa, north-east of Mosul. Disputed between the Kurdish and Iraqi governments, Mosul was once under British and French colonial rule and more recently looted and destroyed by the Islamic State.
Artist Alia Farid (Kuwait) focuses on cultural and commercial networks in the Gulf. Two films explore these issues in greater depth, featuring teenagers talking about their lives as they travel through swamps scarred by oil infrastructure and industrial waste.
Photo: "A night hour, as long as night" by Mounira Al Solh (2023) exhibited at the National Museum Cardiff. Photo: Polly Thomas.