Among nearly 100 submissions from around the world, the jury of the C/O Berlin Talent Award has chosen Italian-Senegalese artist Adji Dieye, born in 1991, in the art category. She will receive prize money and a solo exhibition at Amerika Haus, which will run from December 11, 2021 to March 05, 2022. Her 2020 work Culture Lost and Learned by Heart looks at archival material on French colonial rule in Senegal. Dieye critically examines the function and truth of photographs and how they, as cultural heritage, are used politically in the present. It is a project with important questions, given that people in the 21st century are surrounded and manipulated by images as never before. This is Dieye's first institutional solo exhibition; she has previously been featured in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Wien and Lagos Photo Festival, among others.
The Talent Award in the theory category was presented to Emmanuel Iduma. Born in Nigeria in 1989, he teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where he also studied himself. Iduma is regarded as a versatile writer and art critic whose main topics are photography, new media and contemporary African art. With his ability to put complex content into words in a well-founded way, he was able to prevail over 26 international authors. Iduma's art-theoretical essay on Dieye's award-winning work will appear in a publication by C/O Berlin to accompany the exhibition.
