Himali Singh Soin Wins 2019 Frieze Artist Award

On July 10, London- and Delhi-based artist Himali Singh Soin was named winner of the 2019 London edition of the Frieze Artist Award, which was dedicated to the medium of film for the first time in its five-year history. The award, which also has a New York edition, invites emerging artists worldwide to produce works for Frieze Art Fair. Singh Soin’s newly commissioned film will debut at Frieze London in October. 

Singh Soin’s practice spans poetry, filmmaking, and performance, and draws inspiration from natural environments, mythologies, and invisible histories. Her winning proposal, responding to the prompt “the state of the nation,” extends the artist’s ongoing research project “we are opposite like that” (2019– ), which uses polar landscapes as a jumping-off point for deeper engagements with geographical and social transformation, and alternative modes of storytelling. According to Frieze, Singh Soin’s new film will investigate the popular belief in Victorian society that Arctic ice would spread to Britain, and “reimagine ice as an agent of decolonisation, a blank canvas for histories, desires and possible futures, and as a canary in a coal mine for an imminent climate catastrophe.” 

The award is curated by Diana Campbell Betancourt, who oversees Frieze London’s Projects sector—encompassing screenings, live art, and other curated displays at the fair—and is co-supported by Forma and Channel 4’s short-film commission program Random Acts. Previous winners of the Frieze prize in London include performance and installation artist Kiluanji Kia Henda (2017), and choreographer and performer Alex Baczynski-Jenkins (2018).

Frieze London opens in Regent’s Park on October 3. Channel 4 will also air Singh Soin’s new film on television and online later this year.

Cassie Liu is an editorial intern of ArtAsiaPacific.

To read more of ArtAsiaPacific’s articles, visit our Digital Library.