Iman Issa receives Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture 2024

The Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture 2024 goes to the Egyptian-American artist Iman Issa. According to the Dresden State Art Collections, the 15,000 euro award is linked to an exhibition in which her sculptural works and photographs will be shown at the Albertinum. Isaa is considered one of the most important female artists living in Germany. In her work, she negotiates the political aesthetics of different contemporary worlds, the jury praised the artist.

Born in Cairo in 1979, she lives and works in Vienna and Berlin, among other places. According to the press release, the history of museums and collections is a focal point of her work, in which she deals with the places, the works and their presentations. She often combines objects reduced to clear and precise forms with texts that reveal surprising perspectives.

Master's degree in New York and professorship in Vienna

In 2007, Issa completed her Master of Fine Arts at Columbia University in New York, and in 2020 she was awarded a professorship for performative sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her works have recently been exhibited at the Kunsthalle Lissabon, the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and the Museum of Modern Art New York.

The Ernst Rietschel Art Prize for Sculpture has been awarded every two years since 1991. It commemorates the Saxon artist Ernst Rietschel (1804-1861), one of the most important German sculptors of late classicism, whose works include the Goethe-Schiller Monument in Weimar and the Lessing Monument in Braunschweig.