2003 Johnson
Prize Winner
Nadine Robinson is the recipient of the 2003 William H. Johnson Prize and
was presented with
a check for $20,000. The jury chose Robinson after reviewing applications
from talented African American and other minority artists which were submitted
from throughout the United States.
Robinson was born in London in 1968 and lives and works in New York. She received
a bachelor
of arts degree from State University at Stony Brook, New York in 1995 and
a master of fine arts degree from New York University in 1997. She has been
honored with artist in residencies at several prestigious venues including
the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine in 1997 and
the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2000.
Known for her large-scale sculpture and sound installations called “boom
paintings,” Nadine Robinson has situated herself at the crossroads of
the white modernist canon and the African-American musical aesthetic. She
works within a minimalist vocabulary, combining sounds, audio equipment and
unconventional materials in a way that challenges our definitions of painting.
In the last several years, Robinson’s work has been exhibited in group
and solo exhibitions,
most notably her 2003 solo exhibition at the Institute of ContemporaryArt
in Philadelphia
and in group exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001 (Freestyle)
and PS1/MOMA’s historically important exhibition “Greater New
York.”
The jury also awarded an Honorable Mention to Tana Hargest with a check for
$1000.
