Jhumpa Lahiri and Lee Ufan Announced as This Year’s Isamu Noguchi Award Recipients

With their very different practices, Lahiri and Ufan share Isamu Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, imagination and commitment to creativity.

Jhumpa Lahiri, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, translator and short story writer, and Lee Ufan, a Korean artist, philosopher and poet, have been announced as the recipients of the 11th annual Isamu Noguchi Award. The award was established in 2014 (with inaugural recipients architect Lord Norman Foster and artist Hiroshi Sugimoto) to acknowledge highly accomplished individuals who share Noguchi’s spirit of innovation, unbounded imagination and uncompromising commitment to creativity.

“We are delighted to honor Jhumpa Lahiri and Lee Ufan with the 2024 Isamu Noguchi Award,” said Amy Hau, director of the Noguchi Museum, in a statement. “Both recipients exemplify the innovative spirit and commitment to cross-cultural dialogue that Noguchi championed throughout his life. Lahiri’s poignant literary explorations and translations of identity and belonging, alongside Ufan’s profound contributions to contemporary art and philosophy, resonate deeply with Noguchi’s vision of art as a bridge between diverse cultural and temporal landscapes. Their work not only enriches the arts but also reinforces Noguchi’s belief in the power of creativity to transform and unify our world.”

What we know about the 2024 Isamu Noguchi Award recipients

British-American Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jhumpa Lahiri, author of the acclaimed book Interpreter of Maladies, shares with Isamu Noguchi the necessity of exploring the complexities of identity and belonging across cultures. Her other works include Unaccustomed Earth, The Lowland, In Other Words and Whereabouts—recently Lahiri has shown she is adept at telling stories in both English and Italian. It was her debut collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, that earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction along with the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her first novel, 2003’s The Namesake, was adapted into the 2007 film of the same name, to widespread critical acclaim.

SEE ALSO: Artist Mariko Mori’s New Crystal Sculpture in Venice Is a Call for Universal Peace

Meanwhile, Lee Ufan is considered one of the most influential Korean artists today. He was a leading figure of Mono-ha (School of Things), a contemporary art movement in the late 1960s. His seemingly simple yet deeply spiritual and philosophical pictorial gestures release the energies of the body and mind in a concentrated single flow on the canvas. Similarly, his minimalist sculptural compositions of rocks and other delicate elements achieve a perfect balance between nature and the human experience of the world. Ufan and Noguchi share not only a similar aesthetic but also a precise mindset in approaching the relationship between form, space and void. Through their minimalist aesthetics, use of natural materials and philosophical depth, both artists explore the interaction between their work and the surrounding space, emphasizing simplicity and natural harmony.

The two creatives will be honored at the Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum’s fall benefit, which will be held in October at the Noguchi Museum in Long Island City, New York.