Press Releases

The award enables a work of art to be acquired by Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales for the permanent national collection of contemporary art from one of the artists presenting in each edition of Artes Mundi. Previous recipients of the prize have included Prabhakar Pachpute, Ragnar Kjartansson, Bedwyr Williams, Tanya Bruguera and Anna Boghiguian.  

For this edition, several pieces from the series In Love in Blood (2023) by Mounira Al Solh have been selected for the award by a jury including Ceri Jones, Creative Director, National Contemporary Art Gallery Wales and Sian Ll Williams, the Derek Williams Trust, alongside Artes Mundi.

Twelve pieces from the overall series are currently on display at National Museum Cardiff as part of the UK’s largest biennial international exhibition and art prize – Artes Mundi 10 – which runs at five venues across Wales until 25 February 2024.  

Mounira Al Solh produces paintings, works on paper, video installations, embroidery and performative gestures that explore migration, memory, trauma and loss. Her work bears witness to the stories and lived experiences of those displaced from the continued impact of conflict in the Middle East region with particular focus on the struggles of women in the Arab world.

The textile works of In Love in Blood are characteristic of Al Solh’s practice utilising embroidery and encompassing her interest in using storytelling and  language in all its complexity, its nuance and shifts of meaning. The individual embroideries each illustrate one word from a list compiled by Ibn Qayyim El Jawziyya, a medieval Islamic theologian who lived in Damascus in the 13th century. The collection of Arabic words includes affection, worship, passion, blood, nostalgia, grief and folly, and catalogues more than 50 ways of expressing love, based on the extent, the level, or the nuance of the emotion.  

Ceri Jones, Juror, Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize 2024, said, “It is wonderful that we’re able to acquire these beautiful textile works by Mounira for the national collection. Hand-embroidered and hung freely, without being covered or framed, these pieces have a sense of warmth and familiarity. Each piece exquisitely depicts a simple image or scene, scenes that doubtless evoke differing associations for all of us that view them. The colourfully stitched words and images explore the depth and breadth of love and the emotions and experiences love can bring. A universal sensation, so differently experienced by all, Mounira’s textiles bring the power and reach of love into focus.’’

Sian Ll Williams, The Derek Williams Trust, said: “

“The Derek Williams Trust is proud of its vision and courage twenty years ago in offering the first Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Prize to sit alongside the main Artes Mundi Prize.  We are delighted that its first winner, Berni Searle, is currently being exhibited at National Museum Cardiff.  The Prize has allowed Amgueddfa Cymru to create a collection of works from contemporary artist of international standing which is the envy of most other British galleries”.  

Dr Kath Davies, Director of Collections & Research, Amgueddfa Cymru, said,  

“Thanks to the partnership with the Derek Williams Trust and Artes Mundi, we are delighted to add this work to the national collection. The artist's work resonates deeply with many themes we are exploring as museum and is so rich in terms of colour and texture.”

Nigel Prince, Director, Artes Mundi, said: “Often informed by her own Lebanese-Syrian heritage, Mounira Al Solh’s moving and intimate works consider the importance of oral histories and storytelling as a record of lived experience. Typical of her practice, works from In Love in Blood continue her investigation and use of the experience of the Arabic language to examine the roots and evolving transitions of meaning, how time, location and the languages of immigration open space from the mother tongue.”

As part of the celebrations marking the tenth anniversary and twenty years of Artes Mundi, Amgueddfa Cymru is also displaying work by the first Derek Williams Trust Artes Mundi Purchase Prize winner - Berni Searle’s film work Snow White from 2001 at National Museum Cardiff.

ENDS  

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www.museum.wales  

About the Derek Williams Trust  

The Derek Williams Trust was founded in 1992 to advance public education in and appreciation of the arts by the public display of fine works of art. To this end the Trust now works in close cooperation with Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, collecting post-19th Century fine and applied art. The Trust both purchases art for its own collection which is curated by Amgueddfa Cymru, and supports the Museum in its purchases.

About Artes  Mundi  

Artes Mundi is the key internationally focused flagship visual arts organisation in Wales. For its twentieth anniversary, Artes Mundi 10 (20 October 2023 to 25 February 2024) is presented across five venue partners in Wales for the first time. The artists and exhibition locations for AM10 are: Mounira Al Solh, Rushdi Anwar and Alia Farid at National Museum Cardiff (one of the Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales family of museums); Nguyễn Trinh Thi at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea and Chapter, Cardiff; Taloi Havini at Mostyn, Llandudno and Chapter, Cardiff; Carolina Caycedo at Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown and Chapter, Cardiff; and Naomi Rincón Gallardo at Chapter, Cardiff.  

As an important arbiter of cultural exchange between the UK and international communities, Artes Mundi has built a reputation for bringing together art by some of the most relevant artistic voices engaging with urgent topics of our time. Past editions have seen Artes Mundi work with artists at crucial stages of their careers, often being their first introduction to UK audiences, with many now established figures on the world stage, including Dineo Seshee Bopape, Prabhakar Pachpute, Ragnar Kjartansson, Theaster Gates, John Akomfrah, Teresa Margolles, Xu Bing, and Tania Bruguera.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Mounira Al Solh, born 1978, Lebanon. Lives and works in Lebanon and The Netherlands.

Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2022); Museumsquartier Osnabrück, Germany (2022); Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2020); Mathaf, Qatar (2018); Art Institute Chicago (2018); ALT, Istanbul (2016); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2014); Center for Contemporary Art, Glasgow (2013); Art in General, New York (2012); and Stedelijk Museum Bureau, Amsterdam (2011). Group exhibitions include the Sharjah Biennial (2023); Museum Het Valkhof, Nijmengen, the Netherlands (2022); Busan Biennale (2022); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2020), Carré d’Art Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes (2018); documenta 14, Athens & Kassel (2017); 56th Venice Biennial (2015); New Museum, New York (2014); Homeworks, Beirut (2013); House of Art, Munich (2010); and the 11th International Istanbul Biennial (2009).

In 2024 Al Solh will represent Lebanon at the Venice Biennale.

She is represented by Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg/Beirut.