Visual artist Femke Herregraven selected Arts Prize laureate
Awards ceremony: April 25, 2024
Royal Palace of Brussels
Pl. des Palais 7
1000 Brussels
Belgium
The Evens Foundation is delighted to announce that Dutch artist Femke Herregraven has been selected as the new laureate of the Evens Arts Prize by an independent jury, chosen from proposals by leading European cultural institutions. The 2023 edition of the biennial European award focused on artistic practices that critically engage with AI and address its democratic challenges.
The Evens Arts Prize was awarded in recognition of the artist’s investigation into the social and colonial implications of new technologies and the consistent use of AI to unsettle established capitalist models, convoking alternative imaginaries and voices for new liberatory agency. The laureate will receive a prize of 15,000 EUR. Read the jury statement.
The jury chaired by André Wilkens, Director of the European Cultural Foundation, included Daniel Blanga Gubbay, Artistic Co-Director of Kunstenfestivaldesarts; Nicolas Bourriaud, Artistic Director of the Gwangju Biennale 2024; Elena Filipovic, Director and Curator of Kunsthalle Basel; Matteo Pasquinelli, Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science at Ca’ Foscari University; Gosia Plysa, Director of Unsound.
The artist was nominated by Stefanie Hessler, Director of the Swiss Institute, New York. Independent curator Anne Davidian was the Artistic Director of the Evens Arts Prize.
About the laureate
Femke Herregraven investigates material realities, geographies, and value systems carved out by global finance and geopolitics. Spanning high-frequency trading, mineral mining, cat bonds, and algorithmic systems, her work makes tangible the effects of the financial and technological abstractions on ecosystems, historiography, and individual lives.
Based in Amsterdam, Herregraven, nominee for the Prix de Rome 2019, is part of On-Trade-Off (an artist collective) and a Creator Doctus candidate at Sandberg Instituut. Her work has been exhibited at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Gropius Bau, 12th Taipei Biennial, 13th Gwangju Biennial, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Talbot Rice Gallery, Nottingham Contemporary, BAK, Lubumbashi Biennial, Reina Sofia, and Kunsthall Trondheim.
About Evens Arts Prize
The Evens Arts Prize honours artists who engage with contemporary challenges in Europe. Previous laureates and special mention recipients include choreographer Marlene Monteiro Freitas, artist Andrea Buttner, artist and choreographer Eszter Salamon, and composer Éliane Radigue.
As part of the Evens Foundation’s ongoing investigations around the impact of rapid technological change on contemporary democracy, the 2023 edition of the Evens Arts Prize focused on artistic practices that engage with critical imaginaries of AI.
The Foundation extended invitations to major European cultural institutions to nominate artists who experiment with AI to challenge prevailing systems of knowledge and power asymmetries, mobilize technologies towards emancipatory community outcomes, and envision democratic futures. More about the focus here.
The nominators
Ramon Amaro, Niewe Instituut, Rotterdam / Zdenka Badovinac, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb / Lars Bang Larsen, Art Hub, Copenhagen / Leonardo Bigazzi, Foundation In Between Art Films, Rome / Mercedes Bunz, King’s College, London / Francesca Corona, Festival d’Automne, Paris / Julia Eckhardt, Q-02, Brussels / Silvia Fanti, Live Arts Week /Xing, Bologna / iLiana Fokianaki, State of Concept, Athens / Cyrus Goberville, Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection, Paris / Stefanie Hessler, Swiss Institute, New York / Mathilde Henrot, Locarno Film Festival / Nora N. Khan & Andrea Bellini, Biennale Image en Mouvement 2024, Geneva / Peter Kirn, MusicMakers HackLab, CTM Festival, Berlin / Inga Lace, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga / Andrea Lissoni, Haus der Kunst, Munich / Frank Madlener, IRCAM, Paris / Anna Manubens, Hangar, Madrid / Anne Hilde Neset, Henie Onstad, Høvikodden / Nora O Murchú, transmediale, Berlin / Maria Ines Rodriguez, Walter Leblanc Foundation, Brussels / Nadim Samman, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin / Andras Siebold, Kampnagel, Hamburg / Caspar Sonnen, International Documentary Film Festival (IDFA), Amsterdam / Marlies Wirth, MAK, Vienna / Ben Vickers, Serpentine Galleries, London.
About the Evens Foundation
The Evens Foundation is an independent, public benefit organisation that aims to contribute to the ideal of a resilient Europe that inspires people and communities towards a collective future of freedom, democracy and joy.
