LONDON.- Frieze announce that the winner of the Emdash Award 2012 is the Belgian/American artist Cécile B. Evans, who is based in Berlin. Evans’ work explores the way emotions are valued in contemporary life.

Evans’ winning proposal takes the form of an audio guide to Frieze London accompanied by a holographic ‘host’. The audio guide will feature a panel of non-art experts that will describe works from the fair in a subjective manner. The panel will include notable figures from media, pop culture, politics and science. Evans aims to intervene in the vocabulary typically employed by the contemporary art market and introduce a different type of language to the fair, one based on feelings rather than material, price or provenance. The audio guide will be lead by a host, who will also appear as a hologram throughout the fair. Evans intends for the work to be an interruption, offering perspectives on art that compete with the way it is typically described in a fair environment.

Selected from over 750 applications by artists from all over the world, the winning proposal will be realised at the tenth edition of Frieze London, which is sponsored for the ninth consecutive year by Deutsche Bank.

The Emdash Award allows an emerging artist based outside the UK to realise a major project at Frieze London as part of the critically acclaimed Frieze Projects programme. Sarah McCrory, curator of Frieze Projects, commenting on the announcement said: ‘Cécile B Evans’ proposal for Frieze London will allow visitors an alternative way in to both the fair and the process of viewing art. Her intervention will take place not in the fabric of the fair but in the audience’s experience, which makes it a project I am really excited about.’

The Emdash Award is supported by the Emdash Foundation, a private foundation with a mission to support new ideas and emerging talent across disciplines, from the arts and cultural projects to science.

In 2012, Gasworks, London’s complex of artists’ studios, will once again host the award’s residency.

Evans studied at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, New York, NY. Selected shows and projects from include: Straight Up, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, NY (2012) and ‘Von Funf Bis Seiben’, Galerie Gavriel, Bremen (2010). Group shows include: ‘E-Vapor-8’, 319 Scholes, New York (2012), ‘Skeleton In the Closet’, ReMap 3, Athens (2011), and Berlin Kreuzberg Biennale, Galerie Im Regierungsviertel, Berlin (2010). Forthcoming shows include: ‘Gaze & Lust, Sexuality in Contemporary Art’, Bergen Kunstmuseum (2012), ‘Power of Consumption’, Club Midnight, Berlin (2012), and ‘Trilogy’, Peckham Artist Moving Image (w/ Son Gallery), London (2012).