Wael Shawky

Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award 2011

KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

August 26 – October 21, 2012
Opening: August 25, 2012, 5 – 10 pm

Press Conference: Friday, August 24, 2012, 1 pm

The films, installations, and performative works of the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky explore the ways in which social and political systems have been restructured in Arab countries over the past several decades. Through restaging historical events with children and marionettes, Shawky turns cultural hybridization into a narrative and aesthetic strategy. Using displacement and alienation in content and form, he creates a transitional space between documentation, fiction, and animation. Lovingly and meticulously produced settings and costumes, a wealth of literary and historic references, and astutely selected music come together to create extraordinarily multifaceted films that invite us to think about history and the present day in new ways.

For his first major institutional solo exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, Wael Shawky will create a new, large-scale work.

Wael Shawky was selected as the winner of the Ernst Schering Foundation Art Award 2011. The award, which is presented by the Ernst Schering Foundation in cooperation with KW, includes a solo exhibition at KW, a catalogue, and prize money of 10,000 Euro.

Wael Shawky (born in Alexandria in 1971) studied fine arts at the University of Alexandria and at the Graduate School of Fine Arts of the University of Pennsylvania (USA). In 2010, he established the studio space and study program MASS Alexandria. His works have been shown at the 50th Biennale di Venezia (2003), the 12th Istanbul Biennale (2011), and currently at dOCUMENTA 13 in Kassel (2012), among others.