24. April 2024
2024 Goethe Medal honours Claudia Cabrera, Iskra Geshoska, and Carmen Romero Quero

The 2024 Goethe Medal goes to the literary translator and interpreter Claudia Cabrera from Mexico, the art historian and cultural manager Iskra Geshoska from North Macedonia, and Carmen Romero Quero, the founder and director of the theatre festival Teatro a Mil, from Chile. The Goethe Medal will be awarded by the President of the Goethe-Institut Carola Lentz at a ceremony in Weimar on 28 August 2024. The awardees will present their work at the Kunstfest Weimar, which takes place at the same time. The Goethe-Instituts abroad nominate candidates by virtue of their important contribution to cultural politics and their exceptional artistic work; the selection of awardees is made by a jury of experts.

On announcing this year’s recipients of the Goethe Medal, Goethe-Institut President Carola Lentz noted, “In times of multiple crises and polarised debates as we are experiencing today, we need openness to different perspectives on the world, willingness to learn from each other, and trustful networks – both within a society and between societies. This year’s awardees are outstandingly committed to such connections and to international understanding. Claudia Cabrera ensures that literature in German gains visibility in Latin America through her own translations and her work towards the professionalisation of translation. Iskra Geshoska promotes confidence and European networking in the young art scene in North Macedonia through an NGO and numerous festivals she has founded. Carmen Romero Quero, as a theatre maker and curator, gives children and young people in particular access to theatre and thus also access to other worlds. All three awardees are undaunted by headwinds and obstacles. I am delighted that we are honouring the energetic and tireless commitment of these three women with the Goethe Medal this year.”

Thomas Oberender, chair of the Goethe Medal jury, explains the selection of the awardees: “What they have in common is that they are founders and directors of festivals, associations, or media that break down language and thought barriers and inspire new directions in cultural politics. The awardees are inventors of creative event formats and, for decades, have courageously and innovatively been reflecting the local social and political situation in Latin America and Eastern Europe”.

From the jury’s justification for its selection of awardees:

Claudia Cabrera is considered one of Mexico’s best theatre and literary translators from German. She has translated over 60 novels, plays, and non-fiction books into Mexican Spanish since 1994, including works by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Julia Franck, Cornelia Funke, Franz Kafka, Heiner Müller, Robert Musil, Silke Scheuermann, and, most recently, Anna Seghers. With her impressive translation work, Claudia Cabrera has made a significant contribution to the popularity of German-language literature and authors in Mexico and Central America. Her commitment to the exchange of translators from Mexico and Germany is also tireless, as demonstrated by the ViceVersa translation workshops she initiated. She is constantly working to increase the visibility, professionalisation, and networking of translators in Central America and fosters German-Mexican cultural dialogue through her work.

As an art historian and pioneer in the field of cultural support structures, Iskra Geshoska plays a formative role in the independent art scene in North Macedonia. With the NGO Kontrapunkt, which she founded, and the opening of the cultural centre Tocka, she has created important platforms for the country’s independent cultural scene, helping it to gain a new confidence. She is a co-founder of the CRIC Festival of Critical Culture and the Kooperativa network, which promotes European cultural exchange throughout the post-Yugoslav region. Iskra Gesoska’s work as author and editor, in collaboration with the Templum publishing house and her Digital Agora project, has enabled the translation and popularisation of numerous German authors in North Macedonia, including Joseph Beuys, Alexander Kluge, and Joseph Vogl. She thereby contributes to the cross-societal transfer of knowledge and diversity of perspectives in North Macedonia.

Thirty years ago, Carmen Romero Quero founded Teatro a Mil, one of the most important international theatre festivals in Latin America. She impressed the jury as an interdisciplinary curator who brings the global avant-garde of theatre production to Chile. Dialogue with Germany is particularly important to her, as illustrated by the numerous co-productions she has initiated with HAU Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin and Kampnagel in Hamburg, among others. She is one of Chile’s major public intellectuals and gives a great deal of space to society’s discussion of issues such as human rights, inequality, and the consequences of the 1973 military coup. With various initiatives, she promotes the education of children and young people as well as decentralised cultural work in the various regions of Chile.

About the awardees:

Claudia Cabrera is a literary translator and interpreter. She began translating literary works, including plays, novels, and short stories, in the 1990s. Her most recent project is the new translation of Anna Seghers’ exile literature, who lived in exile in Mexico during the 1940s. Claudia Cabrera’s translations of Seghers’ Transit and La séptima cruz (The Seventh Cross) have already been published. Since 2010, Claudia Cabrera has been a guest at several international literature centres for working residencies. She has also initiated several ViceVersa literary translation workshops for German and Spanish in Germany and Mexico. She studied Hispanic literature and Romance and German philology in Mexico City and Göttingen. Claudia Cabrera is a founding member and president of Ametli (Asociación Mexicana de Traductores Literarios, A.C.), the Mexican association of literary translators. Her translation work was honoured in 2020 with the Premio Bellas Artes de Traducción Literaria Margarita Michelena for her translation of Arnold Zweig’s Das Beil von Wandsbek.

Iskra Geshoska is an art historian, festival organiser, and director of the NGO Kontrapunkt in North Macedonia. After completing her studies, she initially worked as an editor and essayist for various national and international art and literature magazines and journals. In 2001, she founded the NGO Kontrapunkt and the cultural centre Tocka to support young artists in their projects and thus contribute to a confident independent cultural scene. Tocka was forced to close in 2010 following political intervention. Until 2017, the cultural scene in North Macedonia was characterised by censorship and intimidation measures. Since the founding of Kontrapunkt, Iskra Geshoska has been a co-initiator of several networks that are committed to connecting the independent art scenes throughout the region. Iskra Geshoska is also active as a publisher and regularly translates and publishes important titles in contemporary theory. She is co-founder of several festivals for contemporary art theory, philosophy, art, and theatre. She has been advising the President of the Republic of North Macedonia on cultural affairs since 2019.

Carmen Romero Quero is the director of the Teatro a Mil theatre festival, which she founded in 1994. It is now regarded as the most important interdisciplinary theatre festival in South America. Over the years, the festival has not only opened up to new disciplines but has also expanded to the districts outside the Santiago metropolitan region in order to reach civil society across the country. Carmen Romero Quero is also the founder and general director of the Fundación Teatro a Mil, with which she has made a significant contribution to the internationalisation of the performing arts in South America and cultural exchange between South America and other continents. Dialogue with Germany is particularly important to her, and over the years she has not only invited well-established artists from Germany to Chile but has also inspired numerous co-productions with German theatres. She is particularly keen to make theatre in Chile accessible to everyone and to promote theatre work as part of the general education system.

Press photos of the 2024 awardees can be found at www.goethe.de/bilderservice

Information about the Goethe Medal and an overview of previous awardees can be found at www.goethe.de/goethe-medal

About the Goethe Medal

Since 1955, the Goethe-Institut has awarded the Goethe Medal once a year as an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany. It is the most important award of Germany’s foreign cultural policy. The candidates are nominated by the Goethe-Instituts around the world in consultation with Germany’s diplomatic missions. From these nominations, the Goethe Medal Jury, consisting of persons from academia, art, and culture, draws up a selection that is confirmed by the president of the Goethe-Institut. The awarding of the Goethe Medal makes globally relevant cultural issues and actors known to the public in Germany and supports the internationalisation of the German cultural landscape. The award ceremony is held on 28 August, Goethe’s birthday. Since it was first awarded in 1955, 380 persons from 70 countries have been honoured, including Dogan Akhanlı, Yurii Andrukhovych, Daniel Barenboim, David Cornwell aka John le Carré, Princess Marilyn Douala Manga Bell, Sofia Gubaidulina, Ágnes Heller, Wen Hui, Neil MacGregor, Petros Markaris, Ariane Mnouchkine, Tali Nates, Shirin Neshat, Sandbox Collective (Nimi Ravindran and Shiva Pathak), Irina Shcherbakova, Jorge Semprún, Yoko Tawada, Robert Wilson, and Helen Wolff.

The jury for awarding the 2024 Goethe Medal consisted of René Aguigah (presenter and head of Literature, Philosophy, and Religion at Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Berlin), Olga Grjasnowa (writer, Vienna), Julia Grosse (artistic director of Contemporary And, Berlin), Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck (curator and director of Berlinale Shorts, Berlin), Matthias Lilienthal (dramaturg and director, Munich/Berlin), Thomas Oberender (author and curator, Berlin), Antje Rávik Strubel (author, Potsdam), Andrea Zschunke (head of music WDR3, Cologne); representing the Federal Foreign Office: Stefan Rössel (Commissioner for Foreign Cultural Policy); representing the Goethe-Institut: Carola Lentz (President of the Goethe-Institut) and Johannes Ebert (Secretary-General of the Goethe-Institut).

The artistic and discursive programme for the Goethe Medal in Weimar is developed in cooperation with Kunstfest Weimar. The cultural programme of the 2024 Goethe Medal is supported by the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.

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