Glasgow Artist Wins Turner Prize 2024
By Emily Cheung
Portrait of Turner Prize winner JASLEEN KAUR. Photo by David Parry. Courtesy of Tate Britain, London.
On December 4, the Tate Britain in London announced that Scottish-born artist Jasleen Kaur was the winner of the Turner Prize 2024. Presented by actor James Norton at a ceremony, the award of GBP 25,000 (USD 31,600) acknowledged Kaur’s 2023 exhibition “Alter Altar” at Glasgow’s Tramway art space that exemplified the intertwinement of the personal, political, and spiritual.
Upon accepting the prize, the artist expressed solidarity with protesters outside the institution demanding that Tate cut ties with Israel.
Kaur previously studied at the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited works in London at the Wellcome Collection in 2021 and Serpentine Civic in 2020. She describes herself as “an artist making with the slurry of life,” and her current practice evokes her upbringing in the Sikh community by animating quotidian objects through sound and music.
The jury remarked on the “solidarity and joy” expressed in the choreographed audiovisual experience at her exhibition and her ability to “gather different voices through unexpected and playful combinations,” which manifests “moments of resilience and possibility.” Kaur, along with the other shortlisted artists—Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, and Delaine Le Bas—are exhibiting at Tate Britain until February 16, 2025.
Established in 1984, the 40-year-old Turner Prize encourages public debate around new trends in contemporary British art, and is annually awarded to an artist for an outstanding exhibition or other presentations of their work.
Emily Cheung is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.
