Second Winners of $25,000 Gold Art Prize for AAPI and Asian Diaspora Artists Named

The second round of winners of the Gold Art Prize, which awards an unrestricted $25,000 to five AAPI and Asian diaspora artists every other year, are Tishan Hsu, Mire Lee, Gala Porras-Kim, WangShui, as well as the partnership of Enzo Camacho and Amy Lien.

Hsu has been a multimedia artist for five decades, with a particular interest on the growing cognitive and physical impact of computers and technology. WangShui’s video, sculpture, painting and installation work is often about perception and “psychosomatic loops.” Lee’s large, kinetic, fluid sculptures have been described by her as evoking body horror and vore. Camacho and Lien’s sociopolitical multimedia collaborations include figurative sculptures about the mythological monster Manananggal and framed paper works made from food waste. Porras-Kim’s sculptures, installations, and colorful, large-scale drawings of 5,000 artifacts explore how museums and other institutions assign meaning to items.

Mire Lee had her first American solo exhibition at the New Museum earlier this year. WangShui currently has a solo show, ‘Window of Tolerance’, at the Haus der Kunst museum in Munich until March 10 and has work as part of the Guggenheim’s upcoming group show ‘Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility’. Porras-Kim has two exhibitions in Seoul this month: one at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art as a finalist for the Korea Artist Prize opening on October 20; and then “National Treasures” at the Leeum Museum of Art on October 30. Hsu’s work has been shown widely, including at the 2021 Gwangju Biennale and “The Milk of Dreams” at the 2023 Venice Biennale.

The Gold Art Prize was formed by adviser Kelly Huang and Gold House, a California-based nonprofit focused on Asian and Pacific Islander leaders. The creators have said their goal is to increase scholarship, visibility, stronger networks, and opportunities for collaboration for AAPI and Asian diaspora artists. The 2023 prizes are sponsored by the Kahng Foundation.

Porras-Kim’s plans for the funding from the Gold Art Prize were simple and practical: upgrading the fluorescent lighting in her studio in Los Angeles and adding storage space. “Lighting has always been an essential part of the studio but because there’s such an upfront cost, it’s never really been dealt with,” Porras-Kim told ARTnews on the phone while in London, the day before her flight to Seoul. “Most of the regular funds on the day-to-day [go] back into the physical works themselves, but not like full on infrastructure help.”

“The lighting will help my eyes and body, I guess,” she said with a laugh. “I wish it was more exciting, but I’m just doing construction.”

It didn’t occur to Porras-Kim to use some of the money from the Gold Art Prize to upgrade her flight to premium economy or splurge on Korean skincare. “I think that even just making art is already such a privilege,” she said. “You know, I think that that already feels like the upgrade in life. I feel like I’m already living a life of luxury to some degree by being able to do that.”

Selection Committee member Wayee Chu, who is also a board member on the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, said the Gold Art Prize was one of many focused solutions aimed at supporting artists, but there needed to be others too. “You have a new generation of people who are looking to support artists,” she said to ARTnews. “How do you scale this over time? How do you think about different models that will support artists early in their career, whether it’s new models, museums, new ways to fund?”

The inaugural winners of the Gold Art Prize in 2021 were Jes Fan, Maia Ruth Lee, Candice Lin, Moved by the Motion, and Miljohn Ruperto.