Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan has been awarded the Carol Rama Prize by the Artissima art fair. With this, the jury honored Doğan's interpretation of the “ideal of unconventional female creativity and artistic freedom”.
Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan received the Carol Rama Prize endowed with 5,000 euros at this year's Artissima. The 31-year-old was honored for her interpretation of the “ideal of unconventional female creativity and artistic freedom”, according to the jury's statement. As a journalist, Doğan was one of the founders of JINHA, the world's first feminist news agency run exclusively by women and banned by the Turkish government. As an artist, she painted the Kurdish city of Nusaybin under siege and for this she was sent to prison.
The award, named after the self-taught painter Carol Rama, who mainly dealt with erotic motifs, was awarded at the now 27th edition of the Turin Artissima, one of the few pure fairs for contemporary art.
The international jury’s members were: Luca Massimo Barbero, the director of the Institute for Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, Bart van der Heide, director of the Museion Museum in Bolzano, and Kathryn Weir, director of the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina in Naples, also MADRE for short.
This year, part of the 27th Artissima will take place virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, part physically in museums.
The works of 30 artists will be shown online under the title "Artissima XYZ" until 9 December. Zehra Doğan is represented with her work Kurdistan 2, created this year, for which she received an award from Artissima.
