Spanish Embassy holds 11th visual arts competition
The Embassy of Spain in Nigeria in collaboration with the National Gallery of Art recently celebrated the 11th edition of the Visual Arts Competition at the Thought pyramid Arts Centre in Abuja penultimate Friday.
The contest started in 2006 with the aim of encouraging and supporting creativity among young Nigerian artists through their works.
Winners of the competition will be decided by a selection panel constituting members of the Embassy of Spain as well as Nigerian representatives of the visual arts community.
Since 2006, each year’s winner of the Visual Arts competition has been invited to visit the International Contemporary Art Fair (ARCO) in Madrid, Spain.
This year’s competition with the theme ‘Idealism and Fantasy’ commemorates the 4th centenary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish writer who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelists.
Spanish Ambassador to Nigeria, Alfonso Barnuevo in his speech said the Visual Arts competition is a very important event as it is aimed at promoting Nigeria’s artists with the goal of giving them hope and encouragements.
He said it will be a great pleasure to work with the Ministry of Information & Culture, the National Art Gallery, as well as the associations of Nigerian artists, which will allow more artists in the country to easily showcase their works.
The envoy said: “It is one good way to promote the works of Nigerian youths and then enhance the relationship between Spain and Nigeria.”
One of the 2016 winners of the visual Arts competition Sor Sen, in an interview with newsmen said it really feels good to be part of this year’s competition even though he is not a first timer in terms of participating in the art event.
He also said his work brought him out as he emphasized the works of de Cervantes where he described certain levels of insanity adding that, with this he was able to add structures of life that have to do with humans such as religion, gender and racism as life is seen as the way it is rather than the way it should be.
This year’s winner is Mariagoretti Eze.