“One of the great joys of participating as a juror in choosing a winner for the annual Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award presented by NYUAD and ADMAF is becoming aware of the enormous talent and innovative inventiveness of each year’s leading contestants in proposing artworks that could truly reflect the spirit of today’s leading art revolutionaries. Usually it is difficult to arrive at a unanimous conclusion by the committee before hearing extensive arguments for each juror’s favorite contender.

 

This year’s winner is undoubtedly and unreservedly an artwork that merits the highest consideration and responds perfectly to the award’s criteria. Conceived as a bridge between alphabets, worlds, and the realms of the visible and invisible, Abjad is an artwork that compels a novel narrative to unfold before a quizzical spectator. Conceived for the cosmopolitan village that today’s world community, and certainly the UAE forms an integral part thereof, could readily react to and understand, it evokes a sculpture that is both a universal language and vision."  Zaki Nusseibeh, Juror