The Ars Fennica award panel has selected the candidates for the 2008 ARS FENNICA prize. Artists from Finland and the Baltic States were eligible for the award. The candidates were announced 21.1.2008. All the candidates will take part in two exhibitions, the first of which will be held in autumn 2008 at the Amos Anderson Art Museum, Helsinki. The prizewinner will then be announced at the opening of the second, larger exhibition, at the start of 2009, at the KUMU Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia.
The candidates for Ars Fennica 2008 are: Maria Duncker,Tea Mäkipää, Katrina Neiburga, Mark Raidperand Seppo Renvall.
Latvian Katrina Neiburga is one of the most popular Latvian artists of this decade. Combining the documental materials with fiction, she creates stories based on personal experience, in which, alongside with such unique categories as solitude or love, it is possible to find indications both to the woman's social role structures and cultural historical references or critical commentaries on the modern society. The artist wonderfully expresses herself through video which, supplemented by specifically elaborated sound material, results in an amazing and sensitive intonation of narration.
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