Simone Leigh Wins Hugo Boss Prize 2018

Image: Simone Leigh

Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation, and Mark Langer, Chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG, announced yesterday that artist Simone Leigh has been awarded the Hugo Boss Prize 2018. Leigh is the 12th artist to receive the biennial prize, which was established in 1996 to recognize significant achievement in contemporary art. Selected by a jury of international critics and curators, Leigh receives an award of $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, opening in April 2019. Administered by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Hugo Boss Prize is made possible by HUGO BOSS.

“For more than twenty years, the Hugo Boss Prize has been at the center of the Guggenheim’s commitment to contemporary art. We gratefully acknowledge our friends at HUGO BOSS for their visionary partnership in this endeavor, which has made signficant contributions to the field of contemporary art and introduced emerging artists to a global audience,” said Richard Armstrong, Director, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation. “This year, we are pleased to present the award to Simone Leigh who was unanimously recognized by an esteemed panel of jurors for her groundbreaking work as an artist and educator. We join them in congratulating her for this well-deserved honor.”

Simone Leigh

A jury selected Leigh from a short list of six finalists, which also included Bouchra Khalili, Teresa Margolles, Emeka Ogboh, Frances Stark, and Wu Tsang. The 2018 jurors are Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy Hernández, Director, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Dan Fox, Editor-at-Large, frieze magazine; Bisi Silva, Artistic Director, Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos; Susan Thompson, Associate Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and Joan Young, Director, Curatorial Affairs, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. The 2018 jury was chaired by Nancy Spector, Artistic Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation.

“The Hugo Boss Prize marks a highlight in our partnership with the Guggenheim Museum, and we are proud that it has been at the core of our arts program for more than 20 years,” noted Mark Langer, Chairman and CEO, HUGO BOSS AG. “We extend our sincerest congratulations to Simone Leigh and express our gratitude to the jury and the Guggenheim Museum for their dedication and support.”

Jury Statement

“We are pleased to award this year’s Hugo Boss Prize to Simone Leigh, who was selected from a short list of outstanding fellow nominees. Leigh’s singular vision unifies a body of work in sculpture, video, performance, and social projects that deftly joins theory, practice, and form in a tightly coherent oeuvre characterized by a close engagement with the body, the symbolic activation of material, and narrative references to African diasporic histories. Throughout her career, Leigh has consistently expanded the possibilities of ceramics, which is her principal medium and one that has long been undervalued within the mainstream art world.

“We are particularly compelled by Leigh’s longstanding and unwavering commitment to addressing black women as both the subject of and audience for her work, a focus which imagines a recalibration of the outmoded power structures that shape contemporary society. This emphasis on centering the black female experience is profoundly inspiring in its simultaneous radicality and necessity.

“We also applaud Leigh’s sustained mentorship of young female artists; her impact on a next generation of practitioners is already apparent. We are thrilled to award this prize to such an important and influential voice and await her exhibition at the museum next year with great anticipation.”