Maartje Terpstra (Literature) and Katayoon Valamanesh (Visual Arts) have won the prestigious Hendrik de Vries Stipendium 2022. Kirsten de Wrede, Alderman for Culture of the municipality of Groningen, announced this on Sunday 11 December. The stipend is an annual incentive prize for young, professional and talented Groningen artists, intended to stimulate their artistic development. The winners each receive a cash prize of 6,000 euros, which they can use to implement their submitted plans. You can still help determine who wins the Audience Award.
A jury nominated three talents for Visual Arts: Marnix Sixma, Davey Smand and Katayoon Valamanesh. Meinte Dirksen, Renske Marike van Dijk, Thomas van Essen and Maartje Terpstra were nominated in the Literature category. This year the jury consists of: Emily Kocken (chairman), Barend van Heusden, Bart Nijstad, Sandra van Voorst, Rosa Everts and Ernst Arbouw. They advised the Municipal Executive to appoint two of them as winners.
The jury says about the winners:
Katayoon Valamanesh (Visual Arts)
The jury believes that Katayoon Valamanesh deserves a big stage and a wide audience for her work and further development as an artist. From the jury report: Katayoon Valamanesh knows how to “credibly link personal urgency to the professional desire to develop in a new direction, and to intensify visual expressiveness, partly by entering into new interdisciplinary collaborations. She seems to want and be able to express fundamental and individual vulnerability in such an authentic way that, according to the jury, this undertaking will certainly be appreciated by a wide audience, partly due to the artist's uncompromising and passionate proposal. Katayoon Valamanesh is a fairly young artist who will be able to accelerate her fragile but powerful work in what she hopefully can call her new homeland, supported by the award of the stipend.”
Maartje Terpstra (Literature)
Maartje Terpstra's plan is 'experimental and fearlessly ambitious', the jury writes in its report. “She dares to contrast the paradox of language, the destructive and the creative, and to use and release her talent, overwhelming pleasure in language and technique. The work also seems to want to propose a new role to the reader and to pursue an encounter with living language creatures. The jury is impressed by the ambition to create a new language experience where poet, language and reader are jointly responsible. The winning plan reads like a literary organism that actively engages the reader. Maartje Terpstra has a unique, authentic voice that is willing and able to break open existing structures and actively involves readers to allow this new language experience to take place. The jury believes that she displays a fearless, innovative literary vision and hopes that the award of the stipend will support the ambition of this poet.”
Vote for the Audience Award
In addition to the stipend, all nominees also have a chance to win a public prize of 1,000 euros. The winner can use the money for the development of his/her career. Until 11 January, the exhibition De Oogst in Kunstpunt shows previous and recent work by all nominees. You can vote for the public award until 8 January via the ballot box in the exhibition or digitally via kunstpuntgroningen.nl/stem. Kunstpunt is open from Wednesday to Saturday from 12:00 pm to 5:00 pm.