THE SHORTLIST...

Anna Boghiguian (Canada/ Egypt): Her work was first shown in Catherine David’s Contemporary Arab Representations, beginning in 2003 in Rotterdam. Attracting much attention and acclaim, her drawings also stirred political debate and controversy, especially in her native Egypt. Her work offers a unique third-person yet omniscient view of modern urban communities.

Bouchra Khalili (Morocco/ France): Her recent video work, The Mapping Journey Project, has been exhibited internationally including a solo exhibition at MoMA, New York, in 2016. Each of her projects can be seen as a platform offered to members of political minority to elaborate, narrate, and share strategies and discourses of resistance. Working with film, video, installation, photography, and prints, Khalili’s practice articulates language, subjectivity, orality, and geographical explorations.

Otobong Nkanga (Nigeria): Her work , In Wetin You Go Do?, is part of the permanent collection at Tate Modern. Her work explores the social and topographical changes of her environment, observes their inherent complexities and understands how resources such as soil and earth, and their potential values, are subject to regional and cultural analysis.

Trevor Paglen (USA): Trevor launched an artwork into distant orbit around Earth in collaboration with Creative Time and MIT in 2012. Paglen’s ongoing project investigates global state surveillance and the ethics of drone warfare. Paglen has had solo exhibitions at Vienna Secession, Eli &amp, Edythe Broad Art Museum, Van Abbe Museum, Frankfurter Kunstverein, and Protocinema Istanbul, and participated in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, and numerous other venues. He is the author of five books and numerous articles on subjects including experimental geography, state secrecy, military symbology, photography, and visuality.

Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand): His video installations and feature films have won him widespread recognition and numerous festival prizes, including two prizes from the Cannes Film Festival. Themes reflected in his films include dreams, nature, sexuality, and Western perceptions of Thailand and Asia. Often non-linear, with a strong sense of dislocation, his works deal with memory, subtly addressed personal politics and social issues. Working independently of the Thai commercial film industry, he is active in promoting experimental and independent film-making through his company, Kick the Machine.