Aboriginal Collective proppaNOW Wins Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice
The Vera Record Center for Art and Politics has announced Australian Aboriginal artist collective proppaNOW as the receiver of the 2022–24 Jane Lombard Prize for Artwork and Social Justice. The Meanjin/Brisbane–based collective was picked out for the honor, which is attended by a $25,000 money prize, for its 2021 exhibition “OCCURRENT AFFAIR,” at the University of Queensland Art Museum, showcasing new and current performs by its customers and addressing “current sociopolitical, economic and environmental challenges although celebrating the strength, resilience and continuity of Aboriginal culture,” according to a curatorial statement.
Voting unanimously in their favor was an award jury chaired by Simone Leigh, who gained the Golden Lion at this year’s Venice Biennale, and moreover comprising Carin Kuoni, Cuauhtémoc Medina, Wanda Nanibush, and Rasha Salti. In a joint assertion, the jury customers praised proppaNOW for its attempts in pushing back against “the invisibility of urban Aboriginal contemporary art,” noting that it has “broken with expectations of what is good (‘proppa’) in Aboriginal art established a new sovereign place for Initial Nations artists internationally outside colonial stereotypes, desires for authenticity, and capitalist capitulations and opened new political imaginaries.”
The Jane Lombard Prize, which honors remarkable achievements in artwork and politics and recognizes artworks that advance social justice, took as its concept this year “Correction.” proppaNOW, which was recognized in 2003 to convey interest to city Aboriginal artists and to beat the regular anticipations placed on these types of artists by colonizers, was a person of five finalists for the prize, alongside Colectivo Cherani for Cherán Cultural Center Khalil Rabah for The Palestinian Museum of Natural Background and Humankind KUNCI Study Forum & Collective for Faculty of Inappropriate Education and learning and The Africa Cluster of the One more Roadmap College. The collective’s undertaking will be exhibited at New York’s Vera Checklist Middle next tumble.