Providing background to the newly-inaugurated 2004 Artes Mundi Prize, this companion text celebrates the work of the artists shortlisted in the biennial competition, including Janine Antoni, Lee Bul, Berni Serle, and Kara Walker. Celebrating visual culture within a global context, the volume also features this year's winner Xu Bing, a Chinese-born, New York City-based conceptual artist. The shortlisted artists were selected by internationally renowned curators Declan McGonalge and Fumio Nanjo from more than 60 countries for their production of art with ideas of human form or presence that add to an understanding of the human condition.