Jasleen Kaur, winner of the prestigious Turner Prize, used her acceptance speech to call for the Tate to divest from companies with ties to Israel.Jasleen Kaur has won the UK's most prestigious contemporary art award, the Turner Prize, worth 25,000 British pounds , for her work focused on the lives and traditions of the Scottish Sikh community.
Among the objects in Kaur's exhibition was this red Ford Escort covered in a doily, which references her father's first car and Indian migrants who worked in British textile factories.Kaur was announced as the winner by actor James Norton at Tate Britain in London on December 4, Australian time. "We needed a ceasefire a very long time ago, we need a proper ceasefire now, arms embargo now. Free Palestine."
"From a young age, knowing that you could make stuff, being surrounded by tools and being surrounded by produced stuff, it's very obvious why I think through objects," Kaur said. The open letter calls for the UK art institution to, "Take a clear stance against the art-washing of genocide and apartheid" by severing ties with Outset Contemporary Art Fund, the Zabludowicz Art Trust and Zabludowicz Art Projects, including their founders and directors, Candida Gertler and Anita and Poju Zabludowicz.
Gertler was a member of the council until last week, when she resigned from her role at Outset Contemporary Art Fund and her other voluntary roles at UK arts institutions, describing it as "an act of principled protest against the alarming rise of anti-Semitism".