This exhibition presented the work of the four nominees for the Dolf Henkes Prize 2019: Roxette Capriles, Priscila Fernandes, Emma van der Leest and Evelyn Taocheng Wang. The prize is awarded every two years by the Henkes Foundation to an iconic Rotterdam artist.
This year's jury, consisting of Fons Hof (director Art Rotterdam), Ingrid Commandeur (art critic and Course Director MA in, Art Piet Zwarte Institute), Tirzo Martha (sculptor and performance artist) and Katarina Zdjelar (winner of the Dolf Henkes Prize 2016), issues the following statement about the nominations: “We were able to make a selection from a large arsenal of artists who are connected to the city of Rotterdam or to Curaçao and sometimes to both. The dynamism and versatility of the work was striking and the jury attempted to bring this wealth of different positions to the fore in its selection. Transitional areas to design and science, young radicality of the image, unadorned social engagement and discovering yourself in a global world, are all aspects of the contemporary art practices that are expressed by the nominees of the Dolf Henkes Prize 2019.”
The jury report
The jury finds it wonderful to see how Evelyn Taocheng Wang, in her work, alternates poetry and reality and lets them come together to form a larger story, in which her personal presence always remains the guiding principle. Her beautiful drawings, animations and films are both credible, elusive and disturbing. Her work seems calm and casual, yet you notice almost immediately that appearances are deceptive and that it has a charge that is not easily captured in words. In her spatial installation she always manages to seduce the viewer to other views and connections in this whole.
About the winner
Evelyn Taocheng Wang (Chengdu, China, 1981) won the Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prize in 2016 and the Dorothea von Stetten Art Prize in Germany in the same year. With her series 'Massage near me', she shared her experiences from a Chinese massage parlor in the Amsterdam Red Light District. Wang is trained in traditional Chinese painting and studied art at the Städeschule in Frankfurt and De Ateliers in Amsterdam.
Roxette Capriles (Curaçao, 1993) graduated in 2016 from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and, as a former IBB alumni (The Instituto Buena Bista, Curaçao Center for Contemporary Art), worked on the past two editions of the Kunsthal's 'All you can Art' summer school project.
Priscila Fernandes (Portugal, 1981) has had several international exhibitions as a visual artist and is currently coordinating the artist-in-residence Het Wilde Weten in Rotterdam. In addition to TENT, she has also exhibited at the São Paulo Biennale, the Rekjavik Art Museum and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona. In 2011, she received the Prix de Rome Basic Prize for Visual Arts.
Emma van der Leest (Gelderland, 1991) works as a bio-artist with processes and organisms such as bacteria, mushrooms and cells within biotechnology. Van der Leest is the founder and creative director of BlueCity Lab, a biotechnology company and laboratory that experiments with dry and wet materials, located in the former Rotterdam swimming pool Tropicana. In 2015 she graduated Cum Laude from the Product Design study at the Willem de Kooning Academy.
Credits
The Dolf Henkes Prize is an initiative of the Henkes Foundation. The foundation aims to create a favorable art climate in Rotterdam. The Dolf Henkes Prize 2019 is made possible in part by the Henkes Foundation, the Wijngaarden-Boot Collection Foundation, the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, the Stokroos Foundation and TENT, part of CBK Rotterdam.