The artist, writer and musician will take the opportunity to develop a new digital work
Johanna Hedva has been announced as the recipient of the 2021 Adam Reynolds Award, administered by the disability-led organisation Shape Arts. Founded in 2008 in memory of the artist and leader in the disability arts sector, the award supports mid-career disabled artists by providing them with space, time and money to develop their practice. In collaboration with Shape Arts and digital design company Hot Knife Digital Media, Hedva will work to develop the digital counterpart to their forthcoming sound work and installation, GLUT, which will go on show as part of the group exhibition Illiberal Arts at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in September 2021.
Hedva is a Korean-American writer, artist and musician based between Los Angeles and Berlin. They are perhaps best known for their 2016 manifesto, Sick Woman Theory, published in response to a chronic illness that prevented them from engaging in street protests and suggesting a new kind of bedridden revolution. ‘The “sick” part of the Sick Woman speaks to an identity that gets defined by ableism: if you are defined by the care you give and take, you are a person who is sick, or crazy, or unproductive, or a drain on resources… – in other words, your embodied existence deviates from ableist standards,’ they told ArtReview in a recent interview. Hedva also recently published Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of texts, drawings and documentation from performances, which reflects on mysticism, madness, motherhood and magic – all subjects dear to the artist. Their latest album, Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom-metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual, was released in January 2021. They have shown at venues including Klosterruine and Institute of Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and Performance Space, New York.
