Proudly announcing all nominees and winners of the Royal Academy Awards 2017! Congratulations all!

ACADEMY SHOP AWARD

Winner: Jasmijn Muskens (Interior Architecture & Furniture Design)
Jury statement: 'A seemingly simple concept. Colourful, accessible, something to think about. Her work shows that self-confidence is crucial when it comes to a successful translation of your ideas and goals.'

HEDEN START AWARD sponsored by GMW advocaten

Winner: Lisa van Casand (Photography)
Jury statement: The Heden Start Award goes to an artist who's work is both inviting and intriguing, with her presentation. She guides the viewer through her research. She has a remarkable talent to visualise complicated matter into a comprehensive and aesthetically appealing presentation. Her curiosity is contagious and therefore Heden is looking forward to work with Lisa van Casand!
Honorable mentions:
Indré Urbonaité (Photography)
Martijn Mendel (Photography)

JAN ROËDE AWARD

Winner: Mattia Papp (Fine Arts)
Jury statement: 'The jury was impressed by the monumental presentation of this work. The biblical motifs are surrounded by intriguing, picturesque scenes, that are captured with contemporary video techniques. This artist has the talent to transform traditional themes to the here and now.'.

STROOM ENCOURAGEMENT AWARD

Winner: Victoria Douka-Doukopoulou (ArtScience)
Jury statement: 'Victoria has impressed the jury with her textual work that slowly unfolds before your eyes. With minimal means, a strong narrative concept and sense of timing she manages to visualise the invisible'.
Honorable mention:
Afra Eisma (Fine Arts)

PAUL SCHUITEMA AWARD

Winner: Irene Wing Sum Wu (Interior Architecture & Furniture Design)
Jury statement: 'The jury has decided to grant the Paul Schuitema prijs 2017 [award] to Interior Architecture & Furniture Design graduate, Irene Wing Sum Wu for her project Goed Gezellig Gevangen. In awarding Irene’s proposal for a more humane, and therefore more effective prison, the jury has decided to refer to Schuitema’s ideals, that is, his social engagement. With her design Irene proposes a clustered prison building designed to challenge the inmates to change their ways and to provoke their personal development. The Dutch phenomenon Gezelligheid, identified by Irene as a moral concept, is crucial to the experience within the cells of the four subsequent levels forming the route towards the return in society. The jury is impressed by the project’s completeness in concept and detail, its convincing design, its self-evidence and its relevance.'

Honorable mentions:
Sonja de Bruin (Photography)
Yuri Choi (Interior Architecture & Furniture Design)

DEPARTMENT AWARDS BACHELOR'S

Bachelor ArtScience

Winner: Philip Vermeulen
Victoria Douka-Doukopoulou (nominee)
Andreas Sahl Andersen (nominee)

Jury statement: 'A work like Yannis Xenakis at 150 km/h or Novak Djoković on a djembe party. Big, bold and bombastic'

Bachelor Fine Arts

Winner: Luis Maly
Robin van der Heijden (nominee)
Gitte Svendsen (nominee)

Jury statement: 'Luis Maly convinced with a very strong installation. A very personal experience was the start for a work about life, death and time.'

Bachelor Graphic Design

Winner: Marton Kabai
Kate Gaidamaka (nominee)

Jury statement: 'The Confession of the flesh‘ is a fluent digital project which delivers a message that is both exciting and terrifying. Using media and screens in which you translated a philosophical topic into a language of visual codes and references is a call to all, to become more humanistic in a highly technological field. You have created a really beautiful disturbing piece, in which we FEEL the decay in its’ intrinsic erosion.'

Bachelor Interactive/Media/Design

Winner: Ignas Pavlikevicius
Raya Rumenova (nominee)
Julia Sterre Schmitz (nominee)

Jury statement: 'This work invites us to walk on water into a parallel universe where the reflective pools that we peer into mirror back the consciousness that we’ve breathed into code. "Waterproof heart" creeks and ripples of Narcissus, and begs the question: “who are we people?”'

Bachelor Interior Architecture and Furniture Design

Winner: Rick Mouwen
Zsofia Kollar (nominee)
Anna Sitnikova (nominee)

Jury statement: 'You definitely hit the jackpot with your concept of a new palace for the king and you nailed it with your video collage of scenes from the selected films overlaid with the floor plan of the palace you designed. You’ve not only made a convincing and intriguing design combining cinema and architecture, but through your project and research (paper) you contributed to the architectural discourse. Good to see how you can keep your engine running while working on your self-commissioned project. You’ve created a working method that you can use for future projects.'

Bachelor Photography

Winner: Lisa van Casand
Eline Benjaminsen (nominee)
Indrė Unrbonaitė (nominee)

Jury statement: 'Because of the excellent quality of her multi-layered work and her extraordinary talent in research, reflection and production of artwork, Lisa van Casand is the winner of the Photography department award.'

Bachelor Textile and Fashion nominees:

Winner: Rachael Cheong
Roos Boshart (winner)

Jury statement: 'Inconceivable but truly fascinating. Witnessing your collection is an unforgettable and touching experience, that leaves your audience somehow uncomfortable but certainly not indifferent at all. Congratulations, Rachael, you have accomplished your studies in a most remarkable way. It was our pleasure to have you with us and we look forward to witness your future projects.'

DEPARTMENT AWARDS MASTER'S

Master ArtScience

Winner: Natalie Fyfe
Liva Kalnina (nominee)
Cathleen Owens (nominee)

Jury statement: This delicate, intimate work tells a lot by hardly any speech, and shows a lot by hiding a face. Brave, brittle and beautiful.

Master Artistic Research

Winner: Sepideh Jahanpanah
Quinsy Gario (nominee)
Vera Meanness (nominee)

Jury statement: 'Sepideh’s final presentation “A Documentation of a possible work: Corner” is the result of an ongoing and potentially endless recycling of the material world. This unique approach to practice as process, creating a mute scene of incompleteness that reveals the artist’s repeated attempts to make a mark and to leave a trace are the result of a continuous two-year exploration of material and the MAR commends the commitment and intent behind this rich and unfolding practice.'

Master Interior Architecture (INSIDE)

Winner: Klodiana Millona
Minjung Kang (nominee)
Mila Tesi (nominee)

Jury statement: 'Klodiana Millona researched the strong trend in her home country Albania amongst families to construct their own homes in a step-by-step way. Through understanding the dynamics behind this situation, she discovered unique qualities in the permanent state of unfinishedness this creates.'

Master Type and Media

Winner: Pablo Gamez
Sven Fuchs (nominee)
Eun You Noh (nominee)

Jury statement: 'While Gámez’ work does not solve congestion or pollution, he shows that, despite all the technology, the reading in such an environment needs to be subject to human criteria.'

ACADEMY BACHELOR AWARD

Winner: Rachael Cheong (Textile and Fashion)

Jury statement: 'You have focussed on the freaky complexity of human nature by combining dark secrets with innocent sweetness. You tell us a story about dolls which are silent witnesses of hidden and controversial actions. With empty eyes, a fake childish porcelain smile and their stuffy romantic outfit they represent the “perfect” silent audience. Partners in crime without any signs of real human emotions, without anger about what they witnessed, without any capacity to share affection. By characterizing this universal but also personal theme in such an amazing way, you blew us all away! Your research about all kinds of dark secrets is both nasty as totally convincing. In a very professional and totally authentic way you have succeed to find the right interaction between complicated high fashion experiments and the human body, regardless if it is male or female.'

ACADEMY MASTER AWARD

Winner: Natalie Fyfe (ArtScience)

Jury statement: 'Natalie’s intense, controlling, and memorable performance moved the judges, especially the deeply unsettling choreography of the mouth, and a scream which literally hurt the ears. Being party to this performance is a difficult experience, but this deeply personal work reaches outside of itself. Its animalistic presentness and careful theatricality touch on bodily abjection, sanitization, and the human spirit in ways that evoke the work of Beckett as much as the contemporary horror movie or fetishistic sexual practices.'

BACHELOR THESIS AWARD

Nominees:
Douka-Doukopoulou (ArtScience)
Carla Lafourniere (Fine Arts)
Magda Skibinska (Graphic Design)
Ignas Pavliukevicius (Interactive/Media/Design)
Rick Mouwen (Interior Architecture and Furniture Design)
Isabelle van Hemert (Photography)
Rachael Cheong (Textile and Fashion)

Winner: Isabelle van Hemert (Photography)

Jury statement: 'Isabelle van Hemert wins the Bachelor Thesis Award with her thesis Plat en Onbegaanbaar. For van Hemert, encountering the artwork Raum 19 by German artist Imi Knoebel resulted in an ‘embodied gaze’; she encountered the work as a photographic experience. She traces the foundations of this experience in her thesis. What the jury was most impressed by is that she did not only succeed in developing a new way of looking and giving a new interpretation of the artwork, but foremost that she realized new possibilities for herself to connect with the media of photography and art, which will inform her practice in the future'.

MASTER THESIS AWARD

Nominees Master's:
Quinsy Gario (Artistic Research)
Natalie Fyfe (ArtScience)
Klodiana Millona (Interior Architecture (INSIDE)
Sven Fuchs (Type and Media)

Winner: Quinsy Gario

Jury statement: Quinsy Gario is the winner of the Master Thesis Award. The jury is impressed by the urgency and drive of his discourse, in which Gario explores his ‘aesthesis of resistance and politics, of belonging to materially marginalized and self othering communities’. The thesis shows how the artist founded an artistic practice which is able to develop and inform itself and, more importantly, how to understand an artist positioning not just as an individualistic statement but as being imbedded in a broader intersectional framework. His thesis displays an informed range of artistic strategies to build alternative imaginaries.

With the support of STROOM, Heden / GMW Advocaten, Schuitema Stichting, Jan Roëde Stichting, Stichting tot Steun, Municipality The Hague and Keep an Eye Foundation.