Mikhail Karikis was awarded the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award
Mikhail Karikis received the Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award yesterday. Awarded annually for the last 30 years, this prize supports individuals in developing their creative ideas, giving the recipients the freedom to use it as they see fit.
In the artist’s own words: ‘Receiving the Paul Hamlyn Award is a recognition not only of my work, but also of my collaborators. I thank all the participants, the colleagues, the institutions and funders that have believed in my work and have enabled me to develop my projects over the decades. Together we have travelled, cared and cultivated hope in a political present that keeps taking them away. It is also an acknowledgment for art practices that dare to step out of the studio to engage directly with the overlooked and the neglected. Awards with such visibility communicate to mainstream culture and to the artworld that art is made by the people for the people, it is a way to practice our citizenship and a catalyst for a better, more hopeful world.’
‘Sounds of a Revolution’ is an artistic and participatory project that Mikhail Karikis shared with Artallis – Conservatório d’Artes de Loures, CAM and Gulbenkian Música, born out one of the most emblematic gestures of the Carnation Revolution, when red carnations were placed in the muzzles of soldiers’ rifles. This project proposes a reflection on revolutions yet to come, recovering the idea of nature’s opposition to war technology contained in the poetic gesture of the carnation as opposed to the rifle. Karikis and the young students of Artallis sought to draw attention to climate change and its social, political and economic effects, shifting the notion of Revolution to natural elements and nature.
The participatory music creation and performance project, involving the participation of 52 Artallis students aged between 14 and 24 over the course of a year, had its first performance in September at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Grand Auditorium with the Gulbenkian Orchestra, and will result in an audiovisual work to be presented at CAM – Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in the spring of 2025.
