Dolf Henkes Award 2014

The Dolf Henkes Award is awarded every two years to an artist from Rotterdam. At the bequest of the Rotterdam artist Dolf Henkes (1903-1989), the prize is intended to reward artists who are as iconic to the city as the award’s namesake. Previous winners were Jeroen Eisinga, Erik van Lieshout, Melvin Moti, Lara Almarcegui, and Gyz La Rivière. The 2014 Award was won by Lidwien van de Ven.

Silvia B. (Utrecht, 1963) presented a new lifelike sculpture: a lonesome individual, hanging around the exhibition space in a manner suggestive of a surrealist object. A wall-sized installation with a plethora of curious animal paraphernalia from the artist’s personal collection formed the context for two sculptures. The figures and curios inhabit an aesthetically ambiguous world in which civilisation and instinct, emotion and horror, all compete for priority.

Esther Kokmeijer (Brantgum, 1977) reports from her travels, outlining her thoughts, research, and ideas in the form of photographic series, videos, maps, and diary accounts. She premiered a new work, Sheep, with a travelogue around her journey from China to the Land Art Biennial in Mongolia in the company of a sheep. A work with the artist Simon Kentgens documents their attempts to connect with each other from North and South Korea. The duo travelled to meet each other on the border of the two countries, but never met.

Using text, drawings, sculpture, and performance, Ewoud van Rijn (The Hague, 1967) overlaps art and esoteric ideas to explore a new and meaningful positioning of the artist. He transformed the exhibition space of TENT into a place for rituals and meetings. Its focus is a sculpture: partly an architectural folly, partly a space for physical and mental exercise. At the invitation of the artist, a series interviews, performances, and exercises took place in this setting.

The photographs of Lidwien van de Ven (Hulst, 1963) focus on hidden facets of major political events. Her works show external elements of news pictures, drawing attention to ignored nuances or unusual details. To do this, she travels a great deal in Europe and the Middle East, often following the same path as journalists, wile exploring questions of representation and the operations of image perception. The landscape that she photographs is never just a landscape; it has both an ethical and an aesthetic dimension.