Each department nominates their best thesis. Under supervision of Alice Twemlow, lector Design at the KABK, a committee decides which bachelor graduate has written the best thesis of 2018. The winner receives € 500,-.
Thanks to: Stichting tot Steun.
Nominees
in alphabetical order of department
ArtScience - John E. Sandli, Droopy-Eyed Illuminati Pyramid Scheme
Fine Arts - Florence Marceau-Lafleur, ⁞ } ·
Graphic Design - Josephine van Schendel, Gaia's Triad. The Gardener, the Cavewoman and the Witch: An Allegory of the New Wild, Primal Being & Fleshy Hardware
Interactive/Media/Design - Samira Saidi, Inviting Silence: Gaps In The Contemporary Western Archive
Interior Architecture & Furniture Design - Rachel Borovska, First Encounters: Landscapes and Morality
Photography - Sydney Rahimtoola, Undo
Textile & Fashion - Joana Schneider, (Con)temporary memorials. Commemorating in the digital age
And the winner is...Rachel Borovska
Bachelor Interior Architecture and Furniture
The jurors were captivated by Borovska’s thesis, which explores the tensions and convergences between our natural and manmade environments and the systems we use to categorise and interpret them. Using her personal experience of the Slovakian countryside, where she grew up, and of The Hague, where she now finds herself studying as a designer, Borovska combines deep research, theoretical reflection, and the precise use of language to make a sophisticated interpretative reading of the city and its spatial organization systems as an integral part of the natural landscape. She hopes that her research will be useful to urban planners, architects and artists in their engagements with the urban environment. The design of the book is gorgeous and the relationship between prints and the text is especially well considered.
‘Every society develops their own spatial configurations and divisions. Fragmentation is expressed by discontinuities in one’s environment, through which man marks and defines spaces for certain activities to take place. It can be the result of building a network of roads, clearing vegetation for agriculture, cities or rural areas, but also smaller scale fragmentations such as gardens, parks, bridges, bicycle parking, and many other structures. This fragmentation recreates the urban into a landscape of different contexts and divisions, through which we flow on a daily basis. A hybrid sort of an environment emerges. Complexity and mystery reconnect and the availability of immediate information enters and meets the attitude of a well organized life’.
The jury gives a special commendation to Sydney Rahimtoola from BA Photography for an exciting thesis that explores the contemporary engagement with racial body politics through the wearing of hair braids.
Rahimtoola analysed African-diasporic hair styles, including braids, works by hair stylists, photographers, and artists, the commodification and mainstream appropriation of these hair styles, and the online discourse that surrounded the topic. Dealing with such a contemporary topic that is constantly in flux is challenging and Rahimtoola handled the material with maturity and openness. The thesis takes a questioning approach to the subject matter and to her own position as a photographer within it; and is both brave and vulnerable. We felt as if we were taken on a journey through the subject matter and through the artist’s thinking in relation to it.
Jurors:
Maria Pask, artist, tutor at KABK Fine Arts department and PhDArts supervisor
Irene Müller, curator/head Registrar Department at Museum Voorlinden
Chair: Alice Twemlow, KABK Design Lector and Associate Professor at Leiden University