5th International Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award

The Sussmann Foundation awards Jasmina Metwaly
the 5th International Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Award
ARTIST TALK by the prize winner on Thur, December 12th,
2024 at 19:30h at Secession
Welcome words by Axel Stockburger (Vienna Secession)

Jasmina Metwaly (b. 1982, Warsaw) is an Egyptian-Polish artist and filmmaker based between Berlin, Cairo and Szczecin. Her practice spans film, video, performance, and theater, with a strong focus on socially engaged, process-driven work that actively involves participants and audiences. Utilizing diverse materials such as texts, archives, scripts, and images, Metwaly crafts narratives that explore the transgressive nature of images, their evolution behind the camera, and their impact on collective memory. Her work interrogates artistic methodologies, the archiving of images, and how narratives transform when deconstructed, blurring the boundaries between documentation and fiction. Metwaly’s work has been featured at the Townhouse Gallery, Carthage Film Festival, FID Marseille, Bozar, SAVVY Contemporary, Latin Arab International Festival de Cine Latino Árabe, Jeu de Paume, MoMA, the Venice Biennale, Forum Expanded, Cannes, and Rotterdam. In 2022, she was an artist-in-residence at Villa Romana and has been pursuing a PhD at the Academy of Art in Szczecin since 2024. She is also a member of the Mosireen Collective and the media archive https://858\.ma.
The laudatory speech will be given by Ronen Eidelman (IL, USA)
The ARTIST TALK by Jasmina Metwaly
Title: Law, Rebellion, and Collec0ve Resistance: Stories from Egypt How do you speak to something that isn’t there, to a power you feel but can’t see? The law acts like a ghost—something shaped by our collective imagination. It’s a fiction we perform, a truth we all internalize. It dictates how we live, not because it is real, but because we believe in it. Even as passive observers, we watch this ghost take form in courtrooms, parliaments, and public spaces, quietly shaping our world. This lecture examines what happens when people decide to confront this ghost. Drawing from the 2011 revolution in Egypt, it follows the stories of those who risk everything to challenge laws designed to suppress them. In the streets of resistance, thousands face down the ghost of authority, transforming public spaces into arenas of defiance. As Frantz Fanon writes, “The colonial world is a world divided into compartments,” but resistance can dismantle these compartments, creating spaces of solidarity and power. The talk also looks at the ongoing struggle to keep these moments alive. Stories of resistance and hope oMen remain vulnerable, threatened by the very systems they oppose. At the center of this is Alaa AbdelfaNah, a political prisoner whose fight for justice highlights the tension between individual acts of defiance and the larger systems of authority that persist.

Committee 2023: Heba Y. Amin (EGY, DEU); Minna Henriksson (FIN); Nat Muller (NLD, GBR); Marina Napruschkina (BLR, DEU);
Ivor Stodolsky (FRA, DEU, FIN); Eve Sussman (USA, GBR); Lior Zalmanson (ISR)
board of trustees: Friedemann Derschmidt, Daniela Zobel, Ronen Eidelman, Annemarie Steidl
https://www.sussmannfoundation.org / +43 699 1012 6035

The Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Foundation
was founded in 1989 following the will of Heinrich Sussmann to support artists who are committed to the ideal of democracy and antifascism: Artists taking a stand, provoking, creating a dialog, annoying, interpreting, making space, telling stories, shedding light on hidden spaces, in order to resist powers that try to limit freedom, equality, and democracy. They are the ones that are seldomly getting support.
The annual Sussmann ARTIST AWARD
will be awarded to an artist/artist-group based on their current work. The artist(s) will be chosen from a shortlist recommended by our group of advisers (the committee) who were selected based on their commitment to the principles of the Anni and Heinrich Sussmann Foundation and their experience, and knowledge. A jury of a minimum of three artists decides about the acceptance of the price.
Prrevious winners of the prize are: Minna Henriksson (FIN); Khaled Jarrar (PAL); and Marina Napruschkina (BLR, DEU). Heba Y. Amin (EGY, DEU)