British artist Haroon Mirza Wins $50,000 Calder Prize

The British artist Haroon Mirza is the winner of the 2015 Calder Prize. The award comes with a $50,000 cash prize attached and is given by the Calder Foundation and the Scone Foundation in New York.

According to the foundation’s mission statement, the biennial award honors a contemporary artist “who has completed exemplary and innovative early work and who has demonstrated the potential to make a major contribution to the field,” and whose work is influenced by the Modernist master Alexander Calder.

“In addition to the cash prize, the recipient benefits from a residency at the Atelier Calder [in Saché, central France] and the placement of a signature work in a major public collection,” according to a press statement quoted in the Art Newspaper.

Haroon Mirza, 3rd stone (2015), collaboration with Mattia Bosco.
Photo: via Lisson Gallery

This will be the second time Mirza completes a residency at the Atelier Calder, where he already spent the months of June and July in 2013 working on a performance and sculptural piece called The Last Tape, which was subsequently presented during the 2013 edition of the Parisian art fair FIAC.

Mirza was born in London in 1977 and graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2007. His sound-based sculptural installations brought him great acclaim from early on in his career, and he has exhibited extensively and internationally. Mirza is represented by Lisson Gallery, and his largest solo exhibition to date took place last summer at the Tinguely Museum in Basel.

The previous recipients of the Calder Prize are Darren Bader (2013), Rachel Harrison (2011), Tomas Saraceno (2009), Zilvinas Kempinas (2007), and Tara Donovan (2005).

Haroon Mirza, 3Adam, Eve, others and a UFO (2013).
Photo: via Lisson Gallery