Praemium Imperiale: 2024 Arts Awards Spotlight Shigeru Ban, Among Others

On September 10, The Japan Art Association announced the names of the 2024 Praemium Imperiale Laureates in Washington DC, London, Paris, Rome, Berlin and Tokyo. We are pleased to introduce the recipients as follows: 

• Painting: Sophie Calle (France)
• Sculpture: Doris Salcedo (Colombia)
• Architecture: Shigeru Ban (Japan)
• Music: Maria João Pires (Portugal/Switzerland)
• Theater/Film: Ang Lee (Republic of China, Taiwan)

Each artist is recognized and awarded for their international achievements in the arts and their role in enriching the global community. 

"We are extremely proud to be recognizing these exceptional artists," commented Hisashi Hieda, Chairman of the Japan Art Association, addressing reporters in Tokyo on September 10.

Additionally, each laureate receives an honorarium of 15 million JPY (104,000 USD) and a testimonial letter. Prince Hitachi, Honorary Patron of the Japan Art Association, will present a medal at the Awards Ceremony held in Tokyo on November 19, 2024.

The Awards Ceremony will take place at The Okura Tokyo, a luxury hotel in the capital. On November 20, Shigeru Ban will deliver a commemorative architectural lecture. In addition, on November 21, Ang Lee will give an artist talk.

Furthermore, the 2024 laureates join a roster of 175 artistic luminaries. In the past, the awards have celebrated the work of Ingmar Bergman, Leonard Bernstein, Akira Kurosawa, Renzo Piano, Ai Weiwei, and Wim Wenders, among others.

Meet the New Laureates

Congratulations to each laureate for their lifetime of creativity and artistic contributions to humanity. 

Painting

Sophie Calle was born in 1953 in Paris. She is one of France's leading conceptual artists, exploring the lives of others as well as her own in the photography of her work. 

For Calle, her canvases are the countless photos she has produced. Her journey began with her early work The Sleepers (1979), when she invited strangers into her home to photograph them sleeping in her bed, and then interviewed them. She has continued to delve into the lives of others. In The Blind (1986), Calle asked people who were born blind and had never seen, what their image of beauty was. 

Calle won the Commandeur de la Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France for her work in 2012.

Sculpture

Doris Salcedo comes from Columbia. Born in 1958, she has drawn inspiration from more than 50 years of civil war in her home country between left-wing guerrillas and right-wing military militias. 

In an interview with The Sankei Shimbun, Salcedo pledged her commitment to "bear witness to the violence so that it is not easily forgotten." 

A notable work of hers is called Fragmentos (2018), which commemorates the end of the civil war in Colombia. It consists of 1,296 tiles created from melted guerilla fighters' weapons. To add poignancy, twenty women, victims of sexual violence during the war, hammered the metal into tiles. Salcedo said the process restored "dignity and strength again" to the women.  

She has won a plethora of awards, such as the Nasher Sculpture Award, and is the first Colombian artist to win the Praemium Imperiale. 

Architecture

Hailing from Tokyo, Shigeru Ban has built an international reputation for being an architect committed to recycling materials and contributing to solving societal problems. 

He gathered attention when, due to cost constraints, he designed an exhibition using recycled paper tubes derived from rolls of fax and tracing paper. His architecture reached further on the global stage when he was commissioned for the 2000 Hannover Expo Japan Pavilion. 

Ban cemented his reputation for helping in disaster areas by creating accommodations with paper tubes in 1994 for Rwandan war refugees. He has since created temporary housing in earthquake-stricken parts of Japan, as well as for refugees in the Ukraine war. As he said in an interview with the Sankei Shimbun, "I design houses and public buildings, but disaster relief is my life's work." 

Music 

First starting to play the piano at age three, Maria João Pires was born in Lisbon in 1944. She trained with the likes of Francine Benoit and Karl Engel. Her international debuts came at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1986 and Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1989. Those also cemented a prolific recording career. 

Since the 1970s she has also dedicated herself to music in communities and education. In 1999 Pires founded the Belgias Center for the Study of the Arts in Portugal. There, she developed choirs for children from rural backgrounds and appealed to experimental methods for amateurs and professionals alike. 

Theater/Film

Ang Lee was born in Pingtung County, Taiwan, in 1954. 

Though his name might be new to some, he directed several of the most famous films of our time, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and The Life of Pi (2012). Lee won Academy Awards for these three films, the first for Best Foreign Film and the other two for Best Director, respectively. 

After training at the New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, he developed an eclectic style using cutting-edge technology and storylines. One of his early career achievements was winning the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival for The Wedding Banquet (1993), a film about immigrants in the United States. It was a co-production of Sense and Sensibility (1995) that "made me a professional," in Lee's words, and propelled him to Hollywood fame. 

Lee is the first Taiwanese to receive the Premium Imperiale. Commenting on the news, he told The Sankei Shimbun it was a "great honor" and said he was "proud that Taiwan could be recognized this way."

Recognition of Young Artists

The recipient of the 2024 Grant for Young Artists is the Komunitas Salihara Arts Center in Indonesia. 

Komunitas Salihara Arts Center is Indonesia's first private cultural complex dedicated to promoting expresrsive activities in various genres, including music, dance, theater, literature, and visual arts. It began with Komunitas Utan Kayu, an organization founded in 1995 for artistic, intellectual and political art under the military regime. Thereafter, artists, writers, journalists, and intellectuals supported the establishment of the center in Jakarta in August 2008. 

The center's mission is to promote artistic endeavors that uphold freedom of thought and expression, respect diversity, and nurture artistic and intellectual resources. To achieve this, the organization supports experimental programs with a long-term perspective and aims to cultivate a critical eye.

By responding to various artistic trends, the center discovers innovative ideas and new talents, making it easy for audiences to find what they are searching for.

Accepting the Grant for Young Artists

Poet and essayist Nirwan Dewanto is Salihara's Lead Curator and Program Director. He spoke to The Sankei Shimbun: "Focusing on the program, we think of various ways to communicate with the community while critically engaging with the artists' experimental aspirations. By working closely together, we can foster greater freedom of expression and put to the fore new talents."

In a special ceremony during the press conference, the center received a grant of 5 million JPY (approximately 34,800 USD) to support its efforts in promoting young artists. In his thank you speech, Dewanto reflected: 

"Our steps to encourage new talents in the arts in Indonesia are part of our larger mission to nurture freedom, democracy and peace among international communities, the tripartite that are still often threatened by political-economic pragmatism, fundamentalism of all sorts, and climate disasters."

Speaking to JAPAN Forward, Dewanto highlighted the importance of the award given the country's "still insufficient support system for artists." He added, "This award has propelled us to the world stage."

Thirty-five Editions of Awards

The Japan Art Association was established in 1887 and is the oldest cultural foundation in Japan. It operates the Ueno Royal Museum in Tokyo's Ueno Park. Additionally, it organizes and holds art exhibitions, among other activities. 

In 1988, the Japan Art Association established The Praemium Imperiale to commemorate the organization's centennial. It seeks to realize the wish of the late Prince Takamatsu, who served as honorary patron for 58 years, "to contribute to enhancing and promoting the cultures and arts of the world." 

An impressive array of international advisors lead the nominating committee. They are Lamberto Dini (former Prime Minister of Italy), Christopher Patten (former Chancellor of the University of Oxford), Klaus-Dieter Lehmann (former President of the Goethe-Institut), Jean-Pierre Raffarin (former Prime Minister of France) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (former US Secretary of State).

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Authors: JAPAN Forward and Arielle Busetto