Welcoming Speech: Helke Misselwitz, Director of the Film and Media Art Section of the Akademie der Künste
Laudation: Hubertus von Amelunxen, culture and art historian specialised in the history and theory of photography
Artist Talk: Ilit Azoulay, artist, with Maren Lübbke-Tidow, artistic director EMOP Berlin, curator
Moderated by: Clara Herrmann, culture manager, curator and editor

The Akademie der Künste awards the Ellen Auerbach Scholarship for Photography every two years. The 2024 winner is the international artist Ilit Azoulay.

Ilit Azoulay, born in Jaffa in 1972, has Moroccan roots and now lives in Berlin. In addition to numerous international exhibitions, she presented Queendom in the Israeli pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia in 2022. In her large-format tableaux, she combines photographs with artefacts from endangered archives to create new contexts. Her works are based on an intensive examination of archival and curatorial practice as a colonial and gender-specific power structure. Her work is characterised by the transitory between art and research.

In its statement, the jury writes: “Ilit Azoulay is being honoured for her subtle, kaleidoscopic work, which uses photography in its original, genuine meaning to optically uncover and clarify the unconscious. In her often archival work, she records what could not be seen, interpreting history in the light of the now.”

Her sound work Heart to Heart will be presented as part of the EMOP Berlin exhibition was zwischen uns steht (what stands between us).