Anish Kapoor Honored As Genesis Prize Laureate 2017, Will Donate $1 Million Prize to Refugees

Anish Kapoor, I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me. Courtesy Anish Kapoor.

British-Indian, Bombay-born (now Mumbai) artist Anish Kapoor is named the Genesis Prize Laureate 2017, often called the 'Jewish Nobel Prize', awarded to those of Jewish heritage who have excelled professionally. 

"Jewish identity and history have witnessed recurring conditions of indifference, persecution and Holocaust," Kapoor is quoted by The Guardian. "Repeatedly, we have had to repossess ourselves and re-identify our communities. As inheritors and carriers of Jewish values it is unseemly, therefore, for us to ignore the plight of people who are persecuted, who have lost everything and had to flee as refugees in mortal danger."

Kapoor announced that he will use the $1 million prize money to assist the refugee crisis.

The artist recently joined the chorus of dissent against US President Donald Trump, creating a protest work inspired by Joseph Beuys. ArtNet explains:

Kapoor has re-created the poster for Beuys’ performance work I Like America and America Likes Me (1974). Kapoor's image is overlaid with the title 'I Like America and America Doesn’t Like Me' written in a pseudo Antiqua–Fraktur font commonly associated with Nazi German media

Beuys’ 1974 work saw him wrapped in felt upon arriving at JFK airport in New York, and transported to the René Block Gallery in an ambulance, where he spent the entirety of his three-day stay in a room with only a torch, a cane, a wild coyote, and a felt blanket. The performance is seen as a protest work, as Beuys never really saw any of the US, or technically set foot on American soil.