The Artist of the Year, selected by the visitors of BE OPEN Art on an annual basis, gets announced around Christmas and becomes an awardee of €1000. This past December, the title went to Imile Wepener, an artist and illustrator from Johannesburg, South Africa. While obtaining his BA Honours in Visual Communication from The Open Window Institute in Pretoria, Simile was an apprentice of South African master puppeteer Toby van Eck and added puppetry to his skill set, which also includes sculpture, animation, and painting. He currently works as a freelance illustrator.
BE OPEN Art is a non-profit online art gallery project developed by Elena Baturina, who cordially congratulated the winner: “Imile Wepener’ artwork has a touch of magic in it, and the visitors of BE OPEN Art appreciated that as much as we did. BE OPEN Art is proud to showcase the remarkable young talent we meet all over the world and facilitate the artists in getting visibility and the opportunity to have their say in art, which affects the lives of people who appreciate it. We applaud all the featured artists and thank everyone who voted throughout the year.”
To be featured in the gallery, BE OPEN Art selects artists at an early stage of their career who emphasize social consciousness, philosophical meaning, and the aesthetical solutions for the wrongs of the contemporary world, such as inequality, lack of diversity, environmental issues, and consumerism. In a way, the project sees its mission as looking for new influencers in the art scene and invites everyone to contribute to this process.
Another great piece of news is that starting this year, money grants, though smaller, will be awarded to all the monthly winners as well. This has become possible due to the Community Support Fund, the non-profit initiative the gallery launched in January with the hope of building a mechanism of mutual financial support. The initiative attempts to reinvigorate the engagement and communication between the collectors and the BE OPEN Art featured artists by running an actual art trading platform with a community fund function.
Every month of 2024, the trading platform attached to the BE OPEN Art website offered 6-8 art pieces with the condition that the author will receive 50% of its price, while the rest will be accumulated in the BE OPEN Art Community Fund. In December, the amount accumulated in the Community Fund will be split into equal parts and will now be distributed among the monthly winners.
Thanks to the gallery’s patrons, the fund has reached the mark that will allow us to award the artists €300 each! The lucky recipients will be Dora Prévost, Lisa Einkemmer, Brian Connolly, Imile Wepener, Aigerim Asanbekova, Esinulo Chiamaka Praise, S.M.Khayyam, Amy Lewis, Akindele John, Ahsan Memon, Julia Bartolini and Yibei Liu.
“We hope that these additional resources will support our emerging artists in their continued pursuit of a successful career in the arts,” said Elena Baturina. “We want to empower artists to keep dreaming, to keep creating, and to keep following their hearts while involving the audiences in buying their art not purely for purposes of collecting and possession, but also playing a philanthropic part in their future creative paths.”
BE OPEN Art also reports that the regional competition will continue in 2025 to cover four new regions, starting with South Asia in January-March. Elena Baturina explained that “the regional competitions highlight those emerging artists whose art best represents their regional, cultural, and ethnic identities. This helps us support even more young people. From now on, not only each regional winner selected by the public will be awarded a monetary prize, but the foundation’s favorite as well. We love the outcome of the program so much that BE OPEN will expand the regional competition to four new regions over 2025 to involve artists from South Asia, Oceania, South America, and Western Africa.”
Next year, BE OPEN will also tailor a section of the gallery for sustainable and inclusive art and artists, supported by the “Art Limitless” online competition, lectures, master classes, and other sources of knowledge and guidance on sustainability in arts.