Proudly, we announce that the Erste Bank Art Award 2023 goes to Pêdra Costa. This year’s prize will be presented in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Forum Warsaw.
Jury Statement
The jury was convinced by Pêdra Costa’s artistic practice drawing from a wide variety of fields such as performance art, visual and urban anthropology as well as a tarot reading.
Known for working with the body as a primary medium to conceive anti-colonial strategies, pedagogies of self-care, and queer statements, they investigate spiritual technologies and the concept of the "global south" – the jury believes that their parallel engagement with intellectual, political, spiritual and aesthetic questions is of great significance to contemporary discourse, both in Vienna and Warsaw. With their proposal of an exhibition excluding the physical presence of their own body, Pêdra Costa engages with a well-known, yet lately untouched practice. As their first institutional solo exhibition in Vienna, they aim to explore the concept of tarot cards and spiritual practices, creating a multi-sensory experience and a journey of self-exploration.
Jury Members
Ruth Goubran (Head of Community Affairs & Sponsoring Erste Bank)
Alexandra Grausam (Director das weisse haus / studio das weisse haus)
Christian Lübbert (Curator Secession)
Stanislaw Welbel (Curator ACF Warsaw)
Katie Zazenski (Artist, Curator, Writer and Lecturer)
Erste Bank Art Award 2023
In addition to a solo exhibition at das weisse haus (November 2023 – January 2024) and at the ACF Warsaw (opening February/March 2024), the award carries with it a one-month residency in Warsaw, as a source of inspiration and to expand one’s own network. While the prize money of 3,000 euros, provided by the Sponsoring Programme of Erste Bank, covers travel and living expenses an additional production budget is provided for both exhibitions.
Dedicated to artists who have been included in the program of Kunstverein das weisse haus, the prize was presented again in a two-stage competition.
Finalists 2023
Patrícia Chamrazová, Liva Dudareva, Larissa Kopp & Florian Aschka, Lavinia Lanner, Catherine Ludwig, Hyeji Nam, Christiana Perschon, Mariya Vasilyeva, Christina Werner
Pêdra Costa
Pêdra Costa is a ground breaking, formative Brazilian, visual and urban Anthropologist, Performer and Tarot Reader based in Berlin that utilizes intimacy to connect with collectivity. Thework with the body to create fragmented epistemologies of queer communities within ongoing colonial legacies. The work aims to decode violence and transform failure whilst tapping into the powers of resilient knowledge from a plethora of subversive ancestralities and spiritualities that have been integral anti-colonial and necropolitical survival.