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Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt will be awarded the Hannah Höch Prize and Farkhondeh Shahroudi will receive the Hannah Höch Förderpreis 2022

22.12.2021
Kupferstichkabinett

Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt will be awarded the Hannah Höch Prize 2022 and Farkhondeh Shahroudi will receive the Hannah Höch Förderpreis 2022. Both artists will be honoured with special exhibitions at the Kupferstichkabinett in November 2022.

Hannah Höch Prize 2022 for Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt

The artist Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt (*1932, Wurzen), who has lived in Berlin for more than 70 years, is being honored with the 2022 Hannah Höch Prize for her extensive oeuvre, which includes paintings, drawings, and, in particular, typewriter graphics created from 1972 to 1989. With the graphics and the Mail Art program, in which Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt actively participated, she established contact with artists outside the GDR and built up an extensive communication network that spanned the globe. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt sometimes asked the recipients of her typewritings to expand them artistically, resulting in collaborative collages that trace back to Hannah Höch and connect the artists across decades and national borders.

Although Wolf-Rehfeldt's Typewritings are more than 30 years old, they are highly relevant. They negotiate the changes in communication media and their networks, global communication with and without borders, and they pose the question of the value of information - think of today's debates about fake news and censorship. It is this topicality, in addition to the fact that the artist has not yet been honored in her longtime hometown of Berlin, that spoke in favor of her nomination for the Hannah Höch Prize in 2022, the year in which Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt will celebrate her 90th birthday.

About the Hannah Höch Prize

The Hannah Höch Prize has been awarded since 1996 by the Cultural Administration of the Berlin Senate for an outstanding artistic life's work. The prize is named in honor of the artist Hannah Höch (1889–1978), who achieved international fame with her work as a Dadaist. The prize is awarded to artists who live and work in Berlin and who stand out for their continuous artistic achievements. In addition to prize money of 25,000 euros, the award includes an exhibition and a publication. The award winners are selected by the Commission for the Promotion of Fine Arts of the Berlin Senate's Cultural Administration, in which the Berlinische Galerie, the Georg Kolbe Museum, the Neue Berliner Kunstverein and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum are represented in addition to the Kupferstichkabinett.

Hannah Höch Förderpreis2022 for Farkhondeh Shahroudi

The 2022 Hannah Höch Förderpreis will be awarded to Farkhondeh Shahroudi (*1962, Tehran). Shahroudi's artistic work is no less poetic and political than Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt's work, in which drawings, poems and language form an essential part. In Shahroudi's work, the line from which signs and words emerge - irrespective of the language in question - is transformed into the thread that binds together her sculptures sewn from fragments of fabric. Three-dimensional collages as well as works in public space and performances complement Shahroudi's graphic and poetic oeuvre, the abundance and complexity of which convinced the jury and led them to award the artist, who has been living in Berlin for many years, the Hannah Höch Förderpreis 2022.

About the Hannah Höch Förderpreis

With the Hannah Höch Förderpreis, the state of Berlin honors the previous work of a Berlin artist and supports her artistic development in the middle of her career. The prize is awarded by the Cultural Administration of the Berlin Senate every two years together with the Hannah Höch Prize. The sponsorship award includes prize money of 10,000 euros and an exhibition with publication.

The selection is made by an independent jury consisting of one member of the Commission for the Promotion of Fine Arts of the Cultural Administration of the Berlin Senate and two independent jury members appointed by the Cultural Administration. This year's jury consisted of Jenny Graser (Kupferstichkabinett), Willem de Rooij (artist and professor at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main) and Hilke Wagner (Director of the Albertinum of the Dresden State Art Collections).

Special exhibitions in November 2022 at the Kupferstichkabinett

The Kupferstichkabinett will dedicate two parallel solo exhibitions to both artists in its exhibition spaces at the Kulturforum from November 2, 2022 to February 5, 2023. Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt's typewriter works will be set in dialogue with works from the Kupferstichkabinett's collection by Robert Barry, Peter Roehr, and Gert and Uwe Tobias, among others. Organically following on from this, Farkhondeh Shahroudi's exhibition of drawings and sculptures moves into three-dimensional space.

The award ceremony and the opening of both exhibitions are scheduled for 1 November 2022, 6 pm.