Ulrika Sparre Beckers Art Award 2008

Scholarship exhibition
Main hall, Färgfabriken

The 22nd Beckers Art Award – a grant of 150,000 SEK – will this year be awarded to artist Ulrika Sparre (born in 1974). She graduated from Konstfack in 2004.

Jury statement

Ulrika Sparre is an artist who goes straight to the core of the mechanisms, behaviors and social patterns that constitute our lives. By using both collective symbols, such as flags and signs, and subtle gestures such as smoke and hidden rooms, she lands in a place somewhere in between the self and the collective. We regard ourselves secularized, but Sparre seems to believe that a “faith in the self” also is some kind of faith.

Ulrika Sparre’s art gives the socially and politically reflective art a new independent expression, where she is both furiously up-to-date and low-key poetic. Ulrika Sparre is awarded Beckers Art Award of 150,000 SEK for this ability to – at the same time – pinpoint the most human and the collective. 

Related

Beckers Art Award was established in 1987 and has since then proven to have a remarkable ability to identify young talents on the brink of a breakthrough in their careers. The winner is awarded a grant, which from this year has been raised from 150,000 to 200,000 SEK, and a solo exhibition that has, since 2001, been arranged and held in collaboration with Färgfabriken.

Jury: Jenny Lindén Urnes, Mårten Castenfors och Magnus Jensner

Key partners