Entangled relationships
The artist Camille Henrot being honoured by the Arts Foundation of North Rhine-Westphalia.
Camille Henrot has received the Nam June Paik Award bestowed by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The French artist, who lives in New York, is known in particular for her videos and animated films, which combine drawings, music and occasionally scratched or reworked cinematic images. The five works Henrot is presenting thru mid-February 2015 in Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld to mark the Nam June Paik Award are related to her 2013 “Cities of Ys“ project. The artist draws a parallel between the Breton legend of the submerged city of Ys and the history of the Houma Indians, a tribe in Louisiana. In several separate works and a concentrated collage of materials – from classic woodcut and photocopies to the MacBook – Henrot relates details of the legend and provides information about the life of the Indians.
Nam June Paik is regarded as the father of video art. His monumental installations are known all over the world. In Henrot’s oeuvre the jury recognized a reference to “Nam June Paik’s use of technology in the sprit of Fluxus, in order to entangle us more closely in our relationship with dominant media and their institutions, thereby subverting them.” The prize, which is worth 25,000 euros, was awarded for the seventh time.
