The verdict is in and the winner has been announced: 32-year old Anastasia Douka is this year’s recipient of the prestigious DESTE award. Anastasia Douka received her award from Kasper Koenig in a ceremony that took place on the 14th September at the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, where the work of all nominated artists will remain on view until the end of October.
Although the award was conferred upon Douka for her overall artistic output, the work included in the nominations exhibition has the title Lazy Suzan Not (2011) and is an intricate 3-dimensional representation of a sectioned oil-rig. The artist, often preoccupied with the ideas of geography and maps, architecture, contemporary idols and ancient cultures, industrial environments and products, is here reconstructing the permanent (or temporary) effort of the adventurer as he labours to extract gold from the earth’s interior; a metaphor for the struggle of humanity to achieve, to progress, to overcome itself, regardless of motive, objective, or moral justification.
Douka, educated and trained in Athens and Vienna, has been showing her work regularly with Loraini Alimantiri Gazonrouge in Athens, and has also participated in shows such as the 2006 show PANIC ROOM at the DESTE Foundation, curated by Jeffrey Deitch and Kathy Grayson.
The current exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art is showcasing the work of all finalists for this year’s award, namely Alexandra Bachzetsis, Irini Miga, Eftihis Patsourakis, Theodoros Stamatogiannis and Jannis Varelas.
Established in 1999, the DESTE Awards are now a bi-annual institution in the Greek art scene. The aim of the Award is to nurture and promote Greek artists working in Greece and/or abroad, and to give them a platform through which they can be able to reach an international audience. According to its founder, Mr. Dakis Ioannou, the award also aims to create the ‘right conditions for their international prominence’. The Award has been gaining increasing attention and importance on an international level and it was hosted this year for the second time at the Museum of Cycladic Art.
The truly international outlook of the DESTE Award is obvious in the make-up of the judging committee, which included this year Jessica Morgan (curator, Tate Modern, London), Sarah Thornton (journalist, author of Seven Days in the Art World), Kasper Koenig (Director, Museum Ludwig Koln, Koln) and Madeleine Grynsztejn (Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago).
