The New School announced Monday that an anonymous Syrian filmmaking collective, Abounaddara, had won the Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics, given every two years to an artist or group whose work furthers social justice.
The members of Abounaddara, whose name means “man with glasses” in Arabic, began work in 2011, shortly after the uprising that led to the Syrian civil war, making short films about life in their country and posting the films to Vimeo.
The collective’s self-taught filmmakers call their work “emergency cinema” and say its intention is to undermine a simplistic narrative about the civil war — “a gentleman dictator against ugly jihadists” — that prevails in much of the world.
“We have no choice but to use the aesthetics of cinema to produce a form of counter-information,” a spokesman for the collective told The Guardian earlier this year. The collective’s work was recently featured in New York at the New Museum, in “Here and Elsewhere,” an exhibition of contemporary art from and about the Arab world.
The Vera List prize, first awarded in 2012 to the Chicago artist and activist Theaster Gates, includes a $15,000 award and a long-term commitment by the school to aid the winner’s projects through academic study or other means. The prize was established on the 20th anniversary of the List Center, named in honor of the philanthropist and collector Vera List, who died in 2002. List devoted her money and time to art and educational institutions, with a focus on programs that promoted social justice.