Artist Remy Jungerman will receive the Dr. AH Heineken Prize for Art. The jury praises the way in which the artist combines ‘traditions from multiple cultures’. According to the jury, the artist has a unique style and the layering in his work makes the viewer think. Jungerman receives 100 thousand euros. Half of this should be spent on a publication or an exhibition.
Jungerman (63) makes striking sculptures, installations, collages and serigraphs. Geometric shapes predominate and he uses special materials, such as ritual cloths, nails and white clay. He takes his inspiration from the Maroon culture and the Wini religion of his native Suriname, as well as from modernism.
Jungerman has been in the spotlight in recent years. In 2019 he represented the Netherlands at the Venice Biennale and early this year he had a major retrospective at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Since then, he has started to orientate himself more internationally, he says from New York. In this development, the Heineken Prize means ‘a lot’, he says: ‘I think a prize always comes at the right time.’
The artist wants to use part of the prize money to research ‘Gee’s Bend quilts’. Those are colorful patchwork quilts made by African American women in the Alabama hamlet of Gee’s Bend. These handmade blankets were exhibited at the Whitney Museum in New York at the beginning of this century and by a critic of The New York Times named ‘some of the most wonderful works of modern American art’. Jungerman is interested in these quilts because he recognizes shapes in them that also appear on the 20th-century shoulder cloths of the Maroons in Suriname. Jungerman: ‘I hope to be able to make connections between those forms and the African diaspora.’
The Heineken Prizes for art and science are awarded every two years. The other five laureates (scientists) will be announced in the coming days. Previous winners of the Heineken Prize for Art, which has been awarded since 1988, include Aernout Mik (2002), Barbara Visser (2008) and Erik van Lieshout (2018). This year’s prizes will be awarded on September 28.