At a gala dinner in Shanghai on the evening of October 31, Doris Salcedo was named the winner of the first Nomura Art Award, which will be given annually to one artist.

Earlier this year, Nomura Holdings Incorporated, a financial holdings company based in Tokyo, announced it would be establishing a very prestigious annual art prize for a living artist called the Nomura Art Award. On October 31st during the gala dinner in Shanghai, Nomura Holdings Incorporated announced that the first recipient of the $1million award is Doris Salcedo, the world renowned Columbian artist.

The international jury for the prize included some of the art world’s most respected museum directors, curators, foundation leaders and art experts :

• Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+
• Kathy Halbreich, Executive Director, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
• Yuko Hasegawa, Artistic Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
• Max Hollein, Director, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England
• Allan Schwartzman, Founder and Principal of Art Agency, Partners, and Chairman, Fine Arts Division of Sotheby's

The late curator Okwui Enwezor also served on the panel, which completed its deliberation before his death in March.

Hajime Ikeda, Senior Managing Director of Nomura, said: "We offer this Award to Doris Salcedo in recognition of the deeply meaningful and formally inventive body of work she has created over the past quarter of a century. By selecting her to receive the first Nomura Art Award, the jury has perfectly understood our goal of fostering innovation and striving to deliver a better tomorrow. Like Nomura, Doris Salcedo does not shy away from change but rather is determined to be a game-changer. We are proud that this Award will help her to create her next important project."

The prize will enable Doris Salcedo to pursue the Acts of Mourning she created in the center of Bogotá, titled « Que brantos » (Shattered), a memorial to community leads who have been murdered. It was performed on June 10, 2019. The artist can now continue the series outside of Bogotá, in the remote regions of Colombia that have suffered disproportionately from the civil war.

Past artworks of Doris Salcedo were presented at many major international art institutions such as in 2007, At Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall where she made a huge crack in the floor to represent the frontier between the space occupied by illegal immigrants and citizens. In 2003, for the Istanbul Biennial, she filled the space between two buildings with 1,500 wooden chairs to highlight “the masses of faceless migrants who underpin our globalized economy.”

Soon we will discover her next artistic and political vision of her home country…

The Nomura Art Award also launched the Emerging Artist Awards which recognizes and supports exceptional artists starting their careers. The inaugural winners are Cheng Ran (born 1981), a Chinese artist who lives and works in Hangzhou, and Cameron Rowland (born 1988), and an American artist who lives and works in New York City. Each has received US$100,000.

On the photo appears artist Doris Salcedo and Hajime Ikeda, Senior Managing Director of Nomura

More info on Nomura Art Award

More info on Doris Salcedo