Introducing ‘The Family of Man’ - Online learning platform
The Centre national de l'audiovisuel (CNA) has announced an free online teaching platform dedicated to Edward Steichen's historic exhibition “The Family of Man.” This new online platform will provide additional resources for educators and enrich the exhibition experience for students ages 6-19. Available in French, German, and English, the site provides in depth historical information about Edward Steichen and his work and gives further context to the exhibition. Interactive and multidisciplinary teaching guides as well as wide range of activities are available. Registration is free. For more information, please visit www.thefamilyofman.education.
Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg
The Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg is a prize for emerging European visual artists. As a tribute to the life and work of Edward Steichen, born in Luxembourg in 1879, the prize honors Steichen’s artistic achievements as a photographer and curator, as well as his commitment to advocating the arts and nurturing new talent.
The Award was founded in 2004 to create the opportunity for young practitioners to expand their horizon by immersing themselves in the culturally stimulating context of NYC that proved so fertile for Steichen himself. The prize consists of two artist’s residencies of six and four months, respectively, at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (ISCP), a residency-based contemporary art center in Brooklyn, for artists and curators from around the world.
This year’s award ceremony will take place on December 6th at the Museum of Modern Art, Grand Duke Jean, Luxembourg. The Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg is placed under the high patronage of Her Royal Highness the Grand Duchess. With the continued support of the family of Edward Steichen. More on The Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg.
Edward Steichen with Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg at the White House, 1963. Digital image courtesy CNA.
2019 Laureates
Images © CNA/ESAL/Romain Girtgen
Mary-Audrey Ramirez, Edward Steichen Award Luxembourg
Born in 1990 in Luxembourg-City, lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
“Artist Mary-Audrey Ramirez (who goes by m33hr13 when gaming) is a textile-based artist who investigates the social constructs of online worlds and the symbolic violence that is embedded in game-space”, says art critic and curator Kate Brown. “She creates new interpretations of femininity at the intersection of craft theory and gamer ideology. […] In her material work, Ramirez plays on haptic surfaces. There’s yarn on linen, embroidery paintings, and pillow-soft sculptures that frequently recur. Again, the presumption may be that these materials are a far cry from game worlds’ digital matter. However, Ramirez helps us see the role-playing malleability of sewn material. Though her imagery hails from online theatres and often represents the brutal action that can take place there, she finds a cozy landing pad for these themes in plush synthetics.”
Animals are omnipresent in Ramirez’s artistic universe, and art critic Leonie Pfennig explains: “Each of Mary-Audrey Ramirez’s animal sculptures is an attempt to understand the nature of human beings and to comment on their behaviour. When she invests animals with functions - the woodpecker, that can be strapped soothingly to the chest, the little lamb with its sewed-on gloves, screaming innocently for kindness and affection, or the ray embracing the torso like a protecting shield - much is revealed about deeply rooted human desires and needs”.
Mary-Audrey Ramirez was nominated by Kevin Muhlen, Casino Luxembourg - Forum d’art contemporain and Fanny Weinquin, independant curator.
Nora Wagner, Edward Steichen Luxembourg Resident in New York
“Be somewhere”, says Nora Wagner in her artist’s statement, and the emphasis is as much on “being”, the embodied, the sensory and intellectual presence, as on the places or spaces that she invests with her work. Site and context, or, in one word, situation is key to her artistic practice. Not surprisingly, she likes to play and to experiment with what she finds along the way. Every stick and every stone, every object, big or small, and every human encounter is an invitation to act and to re-act.
And so, “somewhere” can be anywhere. The places that Nora Wagner inhabits with her installations and performances are varied and go far beyond the canonic art spaces. She will roam the European continent with a portable studio to connect with fellow artists through a Nomad Workshop (2015). She explores art off the beaten path, literally, organizing a walk through the woods, as a pilgrimage culminating in a guerrilla exhibition (The Walk 2016). She asks questions, playing the part of an ethnographer doing fieldwork, a participant observer engaging the public in a very personal way. Thus, her exhibitions become evolutive and co-constitutive acts of inspiring, vital energy (Élan Vital 2018).
Nora Wagner aims at turning art and culture into a part of everyday life. Here, words, texts and poetry play an important part too. They weave through her work like a delicate thread, an ongoing conversation that she sustains with the world around her.
Nora Wagner was nominated by Marlène Kreins - Galeries d’art de la Ville de Dudelange, Luxembourg.