Willem de Kooning Academy awarded the yearly Drempelprijs (Threshold Awards) on Saturday July 17
Drempelprijs 2022– powered by Municipality of Rotterdam
The Drempelprijs has been awarded annually since 1962 by the Municipality of Rotterdam (Gemeente Rotterdam) to one or more graduates of the Willem de Kooning Academy. Originally, the prize was awarded only to fine art graduates; since 1968 applied arts graduates have also been eligible. The prize is an incentive award, with a nice sum of money: € 5,000. In the WdKA’s curriculum, the traditional distinction between fine art and applied work is no longer considered relevant. Since 2014, the Drempelprijs awarded to students within the three graduation profiles: Autonomous, Social and Commercial practices and the Honours Programme.
And the winners of this year are…
Drempelprijs Autonomous Practices
Winners: 2 instead of 1 (each 2500 euro)
In a rare move, the jury unanimously decided that two students and their projects were deserving of the Threshold award. It is the Jury’s hope that the two winners will equally share the prize money to deepen and refine their projects further in specific ways articulated below.
Ashley Bruinhart – Photography
Project: Arki Na Granm’ma
"The jury is pleased to award Bruinhart for the creation of a project that reclaims narratives of migration and identity - how they are shared, remembered or forgotten - as a method of research, creation, and knowledge sharing. The jury sees the project as a powerful example of storytelling through the use of family as the material connection. In response to feelings of disconnection from an ancestral space/place, Bruinhart’s project brings together a collaborative making aspect that shows the power of kinship and the collective uses of public space in our daily lives. The artist displays a keen awareness of her audience, and provides linkages to highlight the ways representation of race and culture circulate, perceived, and are protected."
Rink Schelling - Product Design
Project: The muddy collection
"The jury were captured by not only the excellent quality of this project, but also the robust research, exploratory methods and risk taking demonstrated by the student. The project is extremely layered and rich which is articulated beautifully in the accompanying publication. They were delighted by the details shared by Schelling and the embodied relationship with the material - earth and clay - that was developed over the course of the research, making, and testing. The results were varied and beautiful, offering up an innovative design product."
Jury
Clementine Edwards - Jury member
Mirjam Linschooten - Jury member
Marta Hryniuk - Jury member
Skye Maule-O'Brien - Secretary
Read the full jury report here.
Drempelprijs Social Practices
Winner: roze meike (Meike Janssens) - Photography (5000 euro)
Project: The Futures Love Us Back. A Perspective on Healing: Using Queer Afrofuturism to Recover from this World
"The jury were moved by Meike’s courage to speak out against the institution and found this act to be a bold and brave move especially because these thoughts were expressed during the jury process. For this reason, the jury would like to commend Meike’s bravery and unanimously award the 2022 Threshold award for Social Practice to Photography Student and Cultural Diversity graduate Meike Janssen. The jury hopes that this decision will shine a positive and encouraging light for all future students who feel in a similar disposition."
Jury
Alexandre Furtado Melville - Chairman
Nina Hama - Jury member
Simone Zeefuik - Jury member
Seecum Cheung - Secretary
Read the full jury report here.
Drempelprijs Honours Programme
Winner: Senka Milutinović – Graphic Design ( 5000 euro)
Project: Momentary Lapse in Memory
"The jury agrees that Momentary Lapse in Memory should be declared the winner of the Drempelprijs 2022 for its good use of digital design techniques, an excellent research paper, the pertinence of the topic of NATO's machine of war and its crimes in the name of "democracy", and the holistic non-linear vision that the author provided in this multidisciplinary endeavor."
Jury
Andreea Breazu - Jury member
Alina Lupu - Jury member
Moosje Moti Goosen - Jury member
Danae Tapia Contreras - Secretary
Read the full jury report here.
Bachelor Research Awards
The WdKA Research Award was established by the Willem de Kooning Foundation in 2015 to emphasize the central role of art and design research within the newly introduced curriculum. The Willem de Kooning Research Awards are no prizes for just theses or research documents but for projects merging theory and practice where art or design work is a vital part of the research. Instead of awarding a first, second and third prize, this year the jury decided to award a first prize (1500 euro) and a shared second second prize (750 euro for each project).
And the winners are:
First Prize – 1500 eur0
roze meike (Meike Janssens) – Photography Social Practices
Project: The Futures Love Us Back. A Perspective on Healing: Using Queer Afrofuturism to Recover from this World
Jury: "This final project clearly stood out as a work that could be exhibited and presented publicly without major revisions. As artistic research, the jury could imagine that the video presentation and the written report could be brought closer together, for example in the form of a visual essay, and that the citation references could be expanded from the Black American to the Afro-European and Afro-continental context.
This project is about healing pain and embodying hope. It is disruptive in its advocacy of rest. Roze meike has a humble confidence in the way she conducts artistic research: her research is intimate, genuine, and personal, yet relates to the urgencies of our time."
Second Prize - Two split second places (two prizes: each 750 euro)
Derrick Crichlow - Spatial Design Commercial Practices
Project: I wish I spoke Papiamentu but I don’t.
Jury: " Through his artistic research, Derrick creates expansive concepts of landscape and navigation across and beyond territories. These include disciplinary territories, land and sea, and languages, as can be seen beautifully in the visual presentation. In this way, the project helps people navigate spaces with which they are unfamiliar. It offers an alternative concept of navigation that is more about embodiment than territory. When the jury visited the installation, they found the use of video and radio (rather than the maps) the strongest aspect of this project that could be further developed."
Roosmarijn van Loon- Fashion Design Social Practices
Project: HEAD ON. Exploring the History of Internalised Stigma of Migraine
Jury: " The quality of Roosmarijn’s artistic research lies in the fact that it is very personal and almost introverted, but at the same time invites visitors to get engaged. The project shows how artistic research can be a real part of healthcare. It is a concrete and transformative proposal. Therefore, the jury would like to advise Roosmarijn not only to present her project as art installations, but to actually bring it into the healthcare system itself."
In addition to the three award-winning projects, the jury would also like to mention two final theses as worthy of publication:
Honey Grace Canira Simatupang – Illustration Social Practices
Project - This document is an act of purging. An Investigative Exploration of Chronic Ambiguity.
Mark Schutte – Animation Commercial Practices
Project - Manuel’s Manual
Read the complete BA Research Awards juryreport here.
Photography Mick Santman (Photography student)
