Tania El Khoury Wins 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Theater
Tania El Khoury. Photo by Nour Annan HRA ’23
Tania El Khoury, distinguished artist in residence in the Theater and Performance Program at Bard and director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts, has won a 2023 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for theater. The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts is an unrestricted prize of $75,000 given annually to risk-taking mid-career artists working in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theater, and the visual arts. The theater award panel honored El Khoury for “her serious and playful, and complex work, her breadth of imagination, and powerful sense of ethical responsibility. Studying the political potential of live art, treating audiences as fellow investigators and researchers, inventing new forms and new ways of engagement with each project, she is opening new paths of meaning and creation.” El Khoury says, “I create work that actively resists borders. The internal and external borders, the visible and invisible, borders within our bodies, colonial borders, cities as borders, the art industry as a border, and national borders as a way to make people disappear.”
The Herb Alpert Award honors and supports artists respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work, at a moment in their lives when they are poised to propel their art in new and unpredictable directions. The Herb Alpert Award recognizes experimenters who are making something that matters within and beyond their field. El Koury is among 11 recipients of the prize, the most ever awarded in a year. Nominated by artists and arts professionals, finalists were invited to submit work samples, and two winners were selected in each field. This year, Gideon Lester, artistic director of the Fisher Center, professor of theater and performance, and senior curator at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard, was among the theater panelists.
Previous Bard recipients of the Herb Alpert Award include:
Martine Syms MFA ’17, Visual Arts 2022
Adam Khalil ’11, Film/Video 2021
Sky Hopinka, Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence and assistant professor of film and electronic arts, Film/Video 2020
Pam Tanowitz, Bard’s first choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center, Dance 2019
Jacqueline Goss, professor of film and electronic arts, Film/Video 2007
Peggy Ahwesh, professor emeritus of film and electronic art, Film/Video 2000
George Lewis, music/sound faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard, Music 1999
Post Date: 05-09-2023
The Herb Alpert Award honors and supports artists respected for their creativity, ingenuity, and bodies of work, at a moment in their lives when they are poised to propel their art in new and unpredictable directions. The Herb Alpert Award recognizes experimenters who are making something that matters within and beyond their field. El Koury is among 11 recipients of the prize, the most ever awarded in a year. Nominated by artists and arts professionals, finalists were invited to submit work samples, and two winners were selected in each field. This year, Gideon Lester, artistic director of the Fisher Center, professor of theater and performance, and senior curator at the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard, was among the theater panelists.
Previous Bard recipients of the Herb Alpert Award include:
Martine Syms MFA ’17, Visual Arts 2022
Adam Khalil ’11, Film/Video 2021
Sky Hopinka, Sherri Burt Hennessey Artist in Residence and assistant professor of film and electronic arts, Film/Video 2020
Pam Tanowitz, Bard’s first choreographer in residence at the Fisher Center, Dance 2019
Jacqueline Goss, professor of film and electronic arts, Film/Video 2007
Peggy Ahwesh, professor emeritus of film and electronic art, Film/Video 2000
George Lewis, music/sound faculty of the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard, Music 1999
Post Date: 05-09-2023