Barcelona Design Week started yesterday with the awarding of the 13th FAD Art Awards, which are convened by the Association of Artists and Artisans of the FAD. 33 finalists have been chosen from more than 200 works, with a large presence of craft techniques and materials applied to art, such as textiles or ceramics.
Still waters run deep, by Nina Murashkin, has emerged as the winner. The jury has assessed in the ceramic vases of the Ukrainian artist established in Barcelona "the formal forcefulness of the set, the clarity of the discourse, the look and the narrative about desire and the fusion of traditional techniques with a contemporary resolution". Murashkina bases the work on a sensual and metaphorical world built on her life experiences. The vases inspired by ancient Greece give a feeling of femininity and sweetness, but the detailed reading is a punch that urges the viewer to reflect.
The jury awarded mentions to Pere Ginard from Mallorca and Concha Romeu López de Sagredo from Madrid. Ginard, illustrator and filmmaker, draws meticulous series of characters, animals and things in Les formes del món, a serial account of an enchanted and diverse world that refers to medieval bestiaries or Aristotelian taxonomies. The jury values "the tenacity and richness of the imaginative world collected in his artist's notebooks".
The mention of Ajuar, by Concha Romeu, values "the subtlety, the tenderness, the care and the attention to deal with the healing process of grief through textiles". After the death of his mother, the artist dyed the sheets with mourning thread by thread. The winning works and all the selected ones can be seen in The best design of the year, in the Dhub.
