Zurich Culture Prize goes to Dodo Hug
This year's Culture Prize of the Canton of Zurich, endowed with 50,000 francs, goes to the singer and cabaret artist Dodo Hug, while the two sponsorship prizes go to the Bla*Sh network and the musician duo Eclecta.
Dodo Hug initially appeared on stage with Christoph Marthaler & Pepe Solbach, among others, and later founded her ensemble Mad Dodo. Since 1994 she has been working together with the Sardinian musician and cantautore Efisio Contini, who is also her life partner. She has been a Swiss/Italian dual citizen since 2004.
This year's two sponsorship awards of CHF 30,000 each go to the Bla*sh network and the musician duo Eclecta. Bla*sh - short for Black She - is a network of Black women cultural mediators and artists in German-speaking Switzerland that was founded in Zurich in 2013. The network is committed to the empowerment of black women in a society in which whiteness and masculinity are still considered the norm.
Eclecta stands for a decidedly eclectic, electrifying musical firework display. The musicians Andrina Bollinger (*1991) and Marena Whitcher (*1990) are responsible for this. They sing, rattle, scream and whisper their way into the music. Even broken glockenspiels, defective pianos, balloons or punched papers find their way into the songs. The musicians studied jazz in Zurich and began to shed their musical blinkers early on in their own formations.
