Article translated by Amritee Mahabir

The Cartier Award is one of the most important European artistic awards. Initiated in 2006, it was founded by Gasworks, a contemporary arts organisation with sites in South London, (host to 12 artists’ studios and a programme of exhibits, residences, international study grants and educational projects) and sponsored by Cartier, the French company linked to contemporary art already with the Foundation with sites in Paris and an associate sponsor of the Frieze Art Fair.
The artistic competition revolves around emerging artists who live and work outside the U.K., who have achieved their degrees or post-graduate diplomas less than five years ago, or are under the age of 30.
Young talents must usually present an art project that could be a site-specific installation, a performance, a film, a video and a work that uses prints. But the way in which the Cartier award differs from other awards is that it doesn’t offer any monetary acknowledgement, but promises a truly unique career opportunity for each emerging artist. In fact, the artistic project judged for its innovation and for its do-ability has the luck of being presented in the Frieze Project programme, curated by Neville Wakefield within the sphere of the Frieze Art Fair. It is the most important contemporary art event in Great Britain that with the passing of time has established an elite position among world art fairs.
It is a once in a lifetime occasion. The Frieze Project of previous years has seen artists of calibre like Jeremy Deller, Roman Ondak and Paola Pivi produce site-specific works that have attracted not only public attention, but also acclaim from the critics.
In 2006 the winner of the Cartier Award was the Argentinean video artist Mika Rottemberg, and in 2007 it was the Mexican artist Mario Garcia Torres. For this year’s edition, the jury composed of Neville Wakefield (curator of the Frieze Project), Hervè Chandés (director of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art), Mia Jankowicz (curator of the residency at Gasworks) and Richard Wentworth (artist), after having accessed over 400 worldwide candidates together, decreed the winner.
It was the thirty year old Cuban artist Wilfredo Prieto who currently lives and works in Barcelona. He is an artist that is already known in Italy for his exhibition at the last Venice Bienniale within the collective art show Territotios with his work “Biblioteca Blanca”, an installation of six thousand completely white books.
Wilfredo Prieto is a young artist who critics define as a conceptual imprint, and who in almost all of his works plays with creating site-specific installations.
For the Frieze Art Fair 2008, Prieto will present a site-specific installation as usual entitled “Pond”, in which more than one hundred oil drums will be arranged, together with the reflection of the water to create a beautiful aesthetic effect and a reflection on the topic of the typical collections of contemporary society, a favourite topic by the artist which is also explored in censored forms within his poetry, from the economy of knowledge and of the so-called age of access.