ICA Boston launches $100,000 award for women artists, with Sarah Sze winning inaugural edition

The Boston-born artist Sarah Sze is the inaugural winner of the ICA Boston's Meraki Artist Award Photo: Deborah Feingold, ICA Boston
The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Boston has launched a $100,000 prize for women visual artists and named the internationally-acclaimed and Boston-born installation artist Sarah Sze as its inaugural recipient. The Meraki Artist Award is funded by Fotene Demoulas—whose family owns the New England supermarket chain Market Basket—and celebrates the achievements of women artists across genres. Sze will receive the award at the ICA Boston’s annual women’s luncheon on 5 May.
“In Greek, the word meraki means to pour your soul into something, and I can think of no better way to describe Fotene’s longstanding support of artists and the ICA,” Jill Medvedow, the ICA's director, said in a statement. “The generosity of this award is echoed in the open spirit and artistic expansiveness of Sarah’s work.”
Demoulas has promised to fund the award for the next ten years, an long-term commitment to raising the profile of women in the arts.
“It’s a huge honour to be the first recipient of the Meraki Artist Award and I’m inspired by the dedication to love, care and art that the award stands for,” Sze said in a statement.
The artist was born in Boston in 1969, is best known for her busy, expansive environments and tableaux that utlise everyday materials to explore themes of technology, memory and historical tangibility. Spanning paintings, video and sculpture, her kinetic practice marries monumentality with an intimate sense of quiet, building on individual moments of suspension and animation as pillars for her world-building.
Sze represented the United States in the 2013 Venice Biennale, has been featured in the Whitney Biennial, and had shows at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. A MacArthur Fellow and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award recipient, she has been commissioned for numerous high-profile public works, including at New York’s LaGuardia airport, London’s Peckham Rye station and the Storm King Art Center in the Hudson Valley.
“I am honoured to collaborate with the ICA to spotlight the passion and presence that women visual artists bring to their practice through the Meraki Artist Award,” Demoulas said. “I want to offer heartfelt congratulations to Sarah, whose innovate work inspires us to see the world in new ways.”
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