Ashfika Rahman Wins the PinchukArtCentre’s $100,000 Future Art Prize as Shortlisted Artists are Praised for Traveling to Kyiv Amid the War

On Tuesday, Bangladeshi artist Ashfika Rahman scooped $100,000 as the winner of 2023’s Future Generation Art Prize in Ukraine, marking the award’s 15th anniversary. The prize, which was launched by the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv in 2009, supports international artists aged 35 or younger.

The exhibition for this year’s award opened on October 4 at the PinchukArtCentre after being delayed twice by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It was originally set for October 2023, with the prize ceremony scheduled for December two months later. However, Russia’s targeting of the country’s infrastructure forced the PinchukArtCentre to again postpone the ceremony to this week.

Twenty-one artists were shortlisted for the exhibition and $20,000 was awarded to five runner ups. They were Tara Abdullah Mohammed Sharif (Iraq), Bekhbaatar Enkhtur (Mongolia), Dina Mimi (Palestine), Hira Nabi (Pakistan), Ipeh Nur (Indonesia), and Zhang Xu Zhan (Taiwan).

Rahman pocketed a $60,000 cash prize and $40,000 to fund her artistic practise. Her winning work, titled Behula and a Thousand Tales (2024), uses photography, prints, text and sculpture to interrogate the role of women in Bangladeshi and global society.

“This award feels particularly meaningful, especially given the global political climate we’re going through,” the artist said in a statement. “The Future Generation Art Prize offers a unique platform where voices can be heard openly, allowing us to be both expressive and politically engaged. This is a space where people from all over the world can speak freely.”

Björn Geldhof, the artistic director of the PinchukArtCentre, told ARTnews that the award’s participating artists who traveled to Ukraine on the train (flights are currently suspended) from Poland showed bravery amid the ongoing war. It was also not possible to insure their artworks due to the conflict.

“The jury were all incredibly touched by the work of the shortlisted artists for the Future Generation Art Prize this year, which marks our 15th anniversary in Kyiv,” he told the audience at the ceremony. “Many of the artists could not join us here to celebrate as we have done in previous years, but the care the team have taken to bring these important works to local audiences has been nothing short of inspirational. I want to thank all the artists in this year’s prize for their commitment to the prize and the work they have delivered. For us, the Future Generation Art Prize is not only about winners, it’s really about a collective of artists we bring together here in Ukraine. Having them here, having them as part of our history, of our family, has been extremely important.”

The jury included Geldhof, Italian curator Cecilia Alemani, who was the curator of the 2022 Venice Biennale, Alicia Knock, the head of the contemporary creation and prospective department at Paris’ Centre Pompidou, Simon Njami, an independent curator, lecturer, art critic, and novelist, and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the director and chief curator of Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

“[We celebrate] Rahman’s brave work that articulates stories that have been historically silenced, not only in Bangladesh and India where Rahman draws her inspiration from, but also globally,” the jury said in a statement.

Ukrainian businessman and philanthropist Victor Pinchuk founded the PinchukArtCentre in September 2006. The previous winner of the Future Generation Prize in 2021 was Afghan artist Aziz Hazara, who accepted her award during an online ceremony due to the pandemic.