Sameen Agha named winner of 2024 Sovereign Asian Art prize

Hong Kong: The Sovereign Art Foundation (SAF) announced Pakistani artist Sameen Agha as the winner of The 2024 Sovereign Asian Art Prize, with a cash prize of US $30,000 for her work 'A Home Is A Terrible Place to Love', an intricately designed sculpture carved from red marble and incorporating a symbolic reference to home. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Asia’s most prestigious award in contemporary art.
 
Michelle Fung of Hong Kong was awarded the Vogue Hong Kong Women’s Art Prize of US$5,000 for her work, Red Bean Stalk, an original wood carving that reflects the culmination of drawing and printmaking work spanning two decades. Demet of the Philippines is awarded the Public Vote Prize of US$1,000 for his work, PPE, Paint Palette Emulation, an oil painting that employs techniques of hyperrealism and trompe l’oeil.
 
Sameen Agha’s winning sculpture draws from a collective well of associations, as she explores the emotions at the core of interpersonal and political tensions. The use of a specific red marble gives a sense of skin, flesh, and blood; it is both hard yet brittle, playing with the idea of a home, which in its own materiality is quite strong as a structure but very fragile in its essence as a domestic space. Agha was nominated for The Prize by curator and arts educator Adeel Uz Zafar.