The Jury is delighted to unanimously award Sasha Kurmaz the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2023/2024 for his project Red Horse, a timely and urgent response to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
Jury Statement:
Red Horse is an expansion of Sasha Kurmaz’s continual investigation into his home country. His highly compelling work presents a powerful and diaristic response to the conflict. The Jury was drawn to the artist’s experimental technique, which reflects the fragmentary nature of day-to-day life and questions what it means to make art during war. This highly personal project creates a record of the artist’s own experience since February 2022, and contributes to a growing collective archive of the ongoing conflict. The Jury is pleased to support Sasha Kurmaz and the Prize will allow him to continue to creatively interpret the military invasion and its aftermath. Sasha Kurmaz says, “My focus is on the visual characteristics of everyday life and how it changes under the pressure of external circumstance. These images are my personal evidence of the dramatic events in which I happen to live.”
About Sasha Kurmaz:
Sasha Kurmaz is an interdisciplinary artist based in Kyiv, Ukraine. He holds a BFA in design from the National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts, obtained in Kyiv, in 2018. He studies various models of interaction with public space, social groups and communities as well as explores the changing relationship between human beings and the modern world. The focus of his work is urban space, society, as well as examines the tension between the individual and the power structures. He uses different media to work with these issues, such as photography, video, public intervention, and performative situations.