Isabel Nuño de Buen: Sprengel Prize 2021 Cat. Sprengel Museum Hanover

Isabel Nuño de Buen (born 1985 in Mexico City) has been awarded the SPRENGEL PRIZE 2021. The prize is awarded by the Niedersächsische Sparkassenstiftung and the state of Lower Saxony to visual artists from Lower Saxony and aims to provide an impetus for cultural exchange across Europe. It is accompanied by a catalog and an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum Hannover. The prize also includes a six-month travel grant to other European countries. Isabel Nuño de Buen’s idiosyncratic position as a sculptor who combines different cultures, media, and techniques in subtle, sign-like and sculptural interventions convinced the prize jury, as did her recent presentation in the large space at the Kunstverein Hannover. Her journey took her through Spain and France where she viewed historic tapestries and honed her work in direct examination of these impressive works. Isabel Nuño de Buen graduated in 2014 from the HBK Braunschweig in the class of Bogomir Ecker, in 2016 she received the prize of the Kunstverein Hannover, and in 2015 she was granted the annual scholarship of the state of Lower Saxony. Most recently, she has had solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Hannover and at The 500 Capp Street Foundation in San Francisco.

Daniel Garza Usabiaga holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Art History and Theory, at the University of Essex (UK) and postdoctoral studies from the Institute of Aesthetic Reasearch of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Currently, he is an independent historian and curator. In the past, he has been curator of the Museum of Modern Art and Chief Curator at the Museo Universitario del Chopo, both in Mexico City. Carina Plath, born in 1966, is an art historian and curator, since 2010 at the Sprengelmuseum Hannover, where she is now deputy director. She has taught in Wuppertal, Berlin, Graz and Munich from 1994 to 2005, and in 2007 was co-curator with Kasper König and Brigitte Franzen of Skulptur.Projekte Münster. Isabel Nuño de Buen, born 1985 in Mexico City, lives and works in Hanover. She has had solo exhibitions 2020 at Kunstverein Hanover, 2017 at The 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco and 2015 at kurimanzutto, Mexico City. Her work is nothing if not ambitious, if not in terms of scale, then definitely in scope. Incorporating sculpture, architecture and drawing, what she makes is primarily interested in how the development of human civilization as an organic, multilayered, ongoing process may parallel and reflect the development of the human subject or psyche.