On 2 March 2019, Barcelona-based Han Nefkens Foundation announced Hao Jingban as the winner of the second Hans Nefkens Foundation – ARCOmadrid Video Art Production Award during the ARCOmadrid art fair. Hao will receive USD15,000 to produce a video work that will be presented at Matadero Madrid in February 2020, coinciding with the next edition of ARCOmadrid, to then tour internationally through to 2021. The Beijing-based artist was unanimously selected by a judging panel chaired by Han Nefkens, Founder of the Han Nefkens Foundation, and joined by Ana Ara, Curator of Programmes at Matadero Madrid, Manuel Segade, Director of Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Sunjung Kim, President of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, and Rein Wolfs, Director of the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn in presence of Alessandra Biscaro, Award coordinator and Hilde Teerlinck, General Director of the Han Nefkens Foundation.
Established in 2018 by the Han Nefkens Foundation in collaboration with ARCOmadrid, the annual award supports video artists under the age of 35, and aims to increase contemporary artistic production in the video art field by supporting the winning artists in developing a new work following the annual theme of ARCO as a point of departure. Lima-born Maya Watanabe was the winner of the inaugural edition of the prize. Hao Jingban (b. 1985) was selected as the 2019 awardee for “the aesthetic strength and the capacity for critical self-reflection in her work, which is aesthetically impeccable and projected towards long-term practice”. In choosing Hao Jingban, the jury felts that the artist’s work “moves smoothly between hectic realities and leisurely traditions, creating multi-levelled power stories”.
The central theme of ARCOmadrid 2020 is “It’s Just a Matter of Time”, where artistic practices will be observed from the work of Cuban-born, American artist Felix Gonzáles-Torres. Hao Jingban will produce a video art piece that takes as a reference the symbolic title of Gonzáles-Torres’ work Perfect Lovers. Under this title, the artist is called to continue the reflection on the vital themes of love, life and time.
Hao Jingban received a BA in Media and Communication from London’s Goldsmiths College in 2007, and an MA in Film Studies from the University of London in 2010. She gained international recognition for her Beijing Ballroom project (2012–2016), where she traces the current ballrooms in Beijing to the two waves of ballroom dancing in the early 1950s and Post-Cultural Revolution in late 1970s. The work focuses on performances to unveil the history of contemporary China, interweaving complex historical narratives and social movements in experimental, documentary and essay films. The project features a wide range of found footage and recordings, archival materials, interviews and voiceovers. UCCA presented her work in a “New Direction” exhibition in 2016. That same year Hao won the Huayu Youth Award Grand Jury Prize in Art Sanya 2016. In 2017, she won the Young Artist of the Year award at the 11th Award of Art China and the International Critics’ Prize at the 63rd Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen.
Hao Jingban uses documentary film’s language and structure to explore social movements and examine how current history is produced. Hao’s work, technically and aesthetically impeccable, is solidly based on social and cultural research, a pivotal element in her practice that makes the artist a great storyteller.