GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (AP) — A performance about identity and race and a series of photographs about humanity's shared connections won grand prizes in a popular art competition in western Michigan.
New Jersey-based Le'Andra LeSeur's "brown, carmine, and blue" performance won the $200,000 juried grand prize at the 10th international ArtPrize in Grand Rapids. Photographs by Indiana-based Chelsea Nix and Mariano Cortez won the $200,000 public vote grand prize for "THE STRING PROJECT."
Artists from around the world vied for $500,000 in cash prizes. The grand prize winners were announced Friday night in the competition which featured more than 1,260 artworks displayed at over 160 venues. Eight other entries each won a $12,500 award.
ArtPrize started last month and spans 19 days. It wraps up Sunday.
The public votes on the artwork using mobile devices and the web. A group of international art experts determines the winners of the juried awards.
Photos in "THE STRING PROJECT" were taken across five continents.
"The string that runs through each portrait underscores that our similarities are greater than our differences, and what unites us is stronger than what divides us," ArtPrize Executive Director Jori Bennett said of the entry.
Lauren Haynes, curator of Contemporary Art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, said "brown, carmine, and blue" is about "what it means to be black, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be queer."
Michigan winners include "PULSE Nightclub: 49 Elegies" by John Gutoskey of Ann Arbor; "The Phoenix" by Joe Butts of Oxford; "Moving Experience" by #shangled of Sparta; "Sonder" by Megan Constance Altieri of Grand Rapids; and "Heidelbergology; 2+2=8" by Tyree Guyton Heidelberg Project in Detroit.
Following this year, organizers plan to hold ArtPrize every other year instead of annually.
