Milestone marks both a growing artistic legacy and an occasion to look back
As part of its Perpetual Arts Initiative, Rolex honours and supports an ever-increasing artistic community in a variety of disciplines that represent the brand’s ongoing commitment to fostering culture and artistic excellence around the globe.

In its long-standing dedication to ensure that the world’s artistic heritage is passed on from generation to generation in a manner that transcends boundaries of nations, cultures and disciplines − and that today’s greatest creative minds help young talent to flourish − the company created the transformative Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, a mentoring programme that is celebrating its 20th anniversary. It is unique among corporate arts programmes in both scope and scale and reflects the fact that over more than 100 years, the company has passed its skills from one generation of watchmakers to the next, each receiving the combined knowledge of all who came before.

Commemorating two decades of mentoring
To mark the milestone of this programme that exemplifies corporate support of the arts at the highest level and plays a tangible role in promoting excellence and the future of the arts, Rolex is gathering what is potentially an unparalleled number of the world’s most talented and respected artists in Athens for an Arts Festival.

After holding Arts Weekends in New York City, London, Venice, Mexico City, Berlin, Cape Town and Brooklyn, Rolex has chosen Athens, an ancient crucible for culture where art thrived centuries ago and remains at the forefront of life.

The Rolex Arts Festival not only provides an occasion to look back at what has been accomplished over the past 20 years, but also a rare opportunity for the public to experience both the height of artistic exchange among the dozens of artists participating, as well as the benefits of the personal transmission of knowledge that stand the test of time and are basic to the initiative.

The festival showcases these outstanding international artists who have advanced their work with the encouragement of Rolex. This support of individual artists is an integral part of the company’s legacy and long-standing commitment to global arts and culture. It is based on the idea that art is a continuum, an accumulation of past experiences and that all artists are inspired by those who went before them.

Gilberto Gil, Robert Lepage, Colm Tóibín, Crystal Pite, Julie Taymor, Kazuyo Sejima and Sir David Chipperfield are just a few of the more than 20 major artists who have generously given their time to take part in the initiative and will be present at the Athens event.

A unique arts programme
The two-decade-old Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative provides up-andcoming artists with the opportunity to engage one-on-one with masters in their field – many living legends – for an extended period of time. Since the beginning, 1,350 people from 120 countries have been nominated for the programme; while, to date, 63 artists have served as mentors and have chosen 63 protégés from 41 countries. Rolex considers the development of this impressive global creative community to be one of the greatest achievements of the programme.

Every discipline encompassed by the mentoring programme – architecture, dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts – will be represented in Athens by the pinnacle of artistry, with the world class artists, the mentors, interacting with the former protégés, now termed ‘Rolex arts fellows’, to demonstrate how the young artists have benefited under the master’s watchful eye.

The social and cultural impact on the arts fellows has been extraordinary with many of them having become artistic leaders – from Lara Foot, the CEO and Artistic Director of Cape Town’s Baxter Theatre, to Tracy K. Smith, a former Poet Laureate of the United States, and Myles Thatcher, an American choreographer for worldrenowned ballet companies – in their own right and making a significant imprint on world culture. Notably, mentors also have been energized and encouraged by extended contact with their younger colleagues, with the result that over the 20 years an international community of artists has benefited from the programme and enhanced all aspects of culture around the globe. “I wouldn’t have considered taking part in the programme if I didn’t expect to learn. Good teachers have always learned from their students,” said David Hockney, visual arts mentor 2004−2005.

Many multi-disciplinary collaborations have also sprung up among the arts fellows, stimulated and challenged by their peers in different artistic areas. To encourage these synergies, Rolex has created a special collaboration fund to support crossdisciplinary projects.

The Rolex Arts Festival pays tribute to the mentoring initiative
For the first time, Rolex is organizing an entire week of celebration and artistic interchange, encompassing a pre-festival from 22 to 25 May and the festival from 26 to 28 May, both showcasing a generation of outstanding international artists who have advanced their work with the support of Rolex and paying tribute to the mentoring programme as it marks its 20th anniversary.

The four-day pre-festival programme primarily dedicated to Greek students and young professionals is bringing together international and Greek artists for public talks, workshops, masterclasses and musical encounters.

During this period, the people of Athens will be privy to 12 free public and professional events, staged by leaders in the local arts community along with Rolex mentors and arts fellows, and, significantly, will be able to enter into the spirit that embodies the mentoring programme celebration.

Remarkably, over the course of the entire week, some 80 Rolex mentors and arts fellows will fill stages, galleries and public spaces of nine partner institutions and venues in Athens with 30 performances, events and talks that highlight the programme’s main themes: the relationship and impact of sharing, and the ongoing artistic legacy and creative relationships that the fellows have created and are continuing to create around the world.

A sampling of the creative interchange among the many multidisciplinary performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, installations and discussions that will take place over the Rolex Arts Festival are:

ARCHITECTURE
• A collaborative exhibition by all five Rolex architecture fellows, Sahel Alhiyari, GloriaCabral, Mariam Issoufou Kamara, Simon Kretz and Yang Zhao who comment on each other’s chosen building or project, taking the audience across the world from China to Jordan and Niger, via Switzerland and Paraguay.

DANCE
• Dance fellow Khoudia Touré presents her latest work, ÓRÓ, with local artists giving the creation a fresh life.
• Rolex Dance fellows Eduardo Fukushima and Myles Thatcher present a double bill of recent work.

FILM
• An outdoor, evening screening offers a unique chance to catch a range of global perspectives in cinema, as Rolex fellows Kyle Bell, Annemarie Jacir, Josué Méndez, Celina Murga, Agustina San Martín, Tom Shoval and Chaitanya Tamhane present short films or excerpts from their recent work. Each filmmaker will introduce their chosen film, with film director and former film mentor Mira Nair hosting the evening.

LITERATURE
• Bulgarian writer Miroslav Penkov will introduce an international roster of authors who present the digital literature project, A Word in Your Ear, showcasing the work of all eight literature fellows: Naomi Alderman, Antonio García Ángel, Edem Awumey, Colin Barrett, Julián Fuks, Julia Leigh, Miroslav Penkov and Tracy K. Smith.

MUSIC
• Rolex music fellow Pauchi Sasaki will premiere ARTEMIS: Fountain, a Rolex Arts Festival commission, at the Dancing Fountains at the Canal of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. The composer-performer will be joined by 30 members of the Greek choir CHÓRES.
• The public will be invited to experience a sound installation by Australian composerperformer Ben Frost, a Rolex music fellow. Created specially for Megaron’s Alexandra Trianti Hall, the installation will envelope visitors in a shifting soundscape realized by more than 30 speakers suspended overhead.
• The closing concert features music fellows Dina Elwedidi, Aurelio Martínez and Marcus Gilmore, leading performances by their Egyptian, Honduran/Garifuna and US ensembles. Joining as a special guest will be legendary Brazilian singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil, Dina Elwedidi’s mentor in the Rolex mentoring programme.

THEATRE
• Theatre fellow Whitney White will perform her work Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, combining the words of William Shakespeare with her own text and music in an exploration of immigration, border-crossings and unexpected human connections.
• Theatre fellow Sebastián Solórzano Rodríguez shares a live performance of his solo work [÷] v.0.8 : Boléro. Using only light, shadow and the sound of his breath, the artist creates a dramatic atmosphere that surrounds the audience.

VISUAL ARTS
• A 20-years of mentoring exhibition features the recent works of all eight visual arts fellows, Sammy Baloji, Alejandro Cesarco, Masanori Handa, Nicholas Hlobo, Mateo López, Thao Nguyen Phan, Camila Rodríguez Triana and Matthias Weischer.

INSTALLATIONS, PERFORMANCES AND TALKS
Throughout the Rolex Arts Festival, the public is invited to experience installation works and performances that Rolex fellows have created, as well as talks.
• Film fellow Annemarie Jacir and literature fellow Colin Barrett, who met and became artistic collaborators through the Rolex mentoring programme, discuss the film project they are currently creating, with the participation of Rolex mentor Colm Tóibín.
• Theatre fellow Maya Zbib, dance fellow Lee Serle and visual arts fellow Mateo López, who met and became artistic collaborators through the Rolex mentoring programme, will present and discuss their work Listening to Walls Wear Off Their Colour.
• Creative Alchemy, an eclectic group of Rolex fellows and mentors, including Carrie Mae Weems, Zakir Hussain and Vasco Mendonça will join in a wide-ranging discussion of the elusive yet essential qualities that spark creative relationships, offering their insights into the cross-currents of influence and inspiration.
• Theatre director Julie Taymor and writer Bernardine Evaristo, both Rolex mentors, and Dimitris Papaioannou, the Greek Director-Choreographer, will share reflections and memories of people who have guided, pushed, provoked and supported them over the course of their careers. This discussion considers the path of their artistic growth and how they subsequently share knowledge with others.
• Theatre fellow Lara Foot, visual arts fellow Sammy Baloji and dance fellows Sang Jijia and Junaid Jemal Sendi come together to discuss the broader social, cultural and political implications of their creative endeavours and consider how their energies resonate beyond the work itself.
• Installations: Dream Wall by Selina Cartmell provides a blackboard on which visitors can inscribe their dreams. Federico León’s Los Tiempos presents a musical retrospective of his work over the years, performed by a self-playing piano. Repetition Compulsion by dance fellow Jason Akira Somma is a digital fun house mirror, which playfully distorts people’s images when they move or dance in the space. Museum of Fiction by theatre fellow Matías Umpierrez comprises a group of light boxes that evoke his multidisciplinary show of the same title, reimagining Macbeth from different perspectives in post-dictatorship Spain.

Programme impact – an experience of a lifetime
The Rolex fellows all agree that their mentorships have been a time of both practical guidance and deep insight. For most, the programme has been life-changing, with the experience of being mentored both deepening their knowledge of their artistic discipline and boosting their confidence, international profile and connections with other people in the arts. In this way, the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative has an impact on arts and culture around the globe.

Many comment on the opportunities for collaboration that Rolex offers and the inspiration that this provides, pointing out how the connections they have made changed their practice as well as changing them as a person and often their career trajectory.

Events like the Rolex Arts Festival are often singled out as the most vivid example of the company’s dedication to building important networks for the mentors and the protégés, as they meet with fellow artists from all over the world.

All agree that Rolex’s biggest contribution through the mentoring programme is how it has nurtured and invested in helping build a multigenerational artistic community around the globe.

Overall, the evolving legacy of 20 years of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative demonstrates the company’s long-standing belief in the power of mentorship – the personal transmission of knowledge that stands the test of time.

ABOUT THE ROLEX MENTOR AND PROTÉGÉ ARTS INITIATIVE
Established in 2002 to assist in the transfer of knowledge from one generation of artists to the next, the mentoring programme is based on the belief that art is a continuum, an accumulation of past experiences over generations, and that all artists are inspired by those who went before them. In keeping with the Rolex tradition of encouraging individual excellence, younger artists of exceptional promise – the protégés – are given the rare opportunity to spend significant periods of time in creative exchange with world-renowned artists in their particular field – the mentors – on a one-to-one basis. The programme today encompasses the disciplines of architecture, dance, film, literature, music, theatre and visual arts. There is also a variable, or “open category”, mentorship that can take place in other fields or in an interdisciplinary pursuit. These mentorships are grouped in alternating periods according to discipline.

The mentors who have so far given of their time and vast talent are among the world’s greatest artists. They are: Sir David Adjaye, El Anatsui, Margaret Atwood, (the late) John Baldessari, Tahar Ben Jelloun, (the late) Trisha Brown, (the late) Patrice Chéreau, Sir David Chipperfield, Mia Couto, Alfonso Cuarón, (the late) Sir Colin Davis, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Olafur Eliasson, Brian Eno, (the late) Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Bernardine Evaristo, William Forsythe, Stephen Frears, Gilberto Gil, Philip Glass, Alejandro G. Iñárritu, (the late) Sir Peter Hall, David Hockney, Rebecca Horn, Zakir Hussain, Jia Zhang-Ke, Joan Jonas, Sir Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Jiří Kylián, Anne Lacaton, Robert Lepage, Lin Hwai-min, Phyllida Lloyd, Spike Lee, Lin-Manuel Miranda, (the late) Toni Morrison, Walter Murch, Ohad Naharin, Mira Nair, Youssou N’Dour, (the late) Jessye Norman, Michael Ondaatje, Crystal Pite, Alexei Ratmansky, Dianne Reeves, Kaija Saariaho, Martin Scorsese, Kazuyo Sejima, Peter Sellars, Álvaro Siza, Wole Soyinka, Julie Taymor, Saburo Teshigawara, Jennifer Tipton, Colm Tóibín, Kate Valk, Mario Vargas Llosa, Carrie Mae Weems, Robert Wilson, Zhang Yimou, Pinchas Zukerman and Peter Zumthor.

ABOUT ROLEX
AN UNRIVALLED REPUTATION FOR QUALITY AND EXPERTISE
Rolex is an integrated and independent Swiss watch manufacture. Headquartered in Geneva, the brand is recognized the world over for its expertise and the quality of its products – symbols of excellence, elegance and prestige. The movements of its Oyster Perpetual and Perpetual watches are certified by COSC, then tested inhouse for their precision, performance and reliability. The Superlative Chronometer certification, symbolized by the green seal, confirms that each watch has successfully undergone tests conducted by Rolex in its own laboratories according to its own criteria. These are periodically validated by an independent external organization. The word ‘Perpetual’ is inscribed on every Rolex Oyster watch. But more than just a word on a dial, it is a philosophy that embodies the company’s vision and values.

Hans Wilsdorf, the founder of the company, instilled a notion of perpetual excellence that would drive the company forward. This led Rolex to pioneer the development of the wristwatch and numerous major watchmaking innovations, such as the Oyster, the first waterproof wristwatch, launched in 1926, and the Perpetual rotor self-winding mechanism, invented in 1931. In the course of its history, Rolex has registered over 600 patents. At its four sites in Switzerland, the brand designs, develops and produces the majority of its watch components, from the casting of the gold alloys to the machining, crafting, assembly and finishing of the movement, case, dial and bracelet. Furthermore, the brand is actively involved in supporting the arts and culture, sport and exploration, as well as those who are devising solutions to preserve the planet.