Ansuya Blom Receives the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts 2020

Netherlands’ largest art prize awarded to Amsterdam artist

The international jury of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts has awarded the prize to visual artist Ansuya Blom. She will receive €100,000, half of which is intended for a publication and/or exhibition. The jury describes Ansuya Blom’s work as intimate, committed and poetic. The Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts is the largest visual arts prize in the Netherlands, financed from a private fund, the Dr. A.H. Heineken Foundation for the Arts. The biennial prize has existed since 1988 and this year will be awarded to a visual artist for the seventeenth time. The exact date for the official award ceremony will be announced later due to Covid-19 measures.

Reasoning of the jury
Her work does not cry out for attention, nor does Ansuya Blom herself. She chooses to remain in the background and allows her work to penetrate in a whisper. For more than forty years Blom has been working steadily on an oeuvre that explores the boundaries of the inner world of experience. In films, drawings, paintings, installations and texts, she always manages to get under the skin and portray man’s struggle with himself and his surroundings in a committed and poetic way. Blom’s work speaks of a great social and societal engagement. With her interest in psychoanalysis and psychiatry, her work offers space for the voices of those who are often not heard: the marginal or forgotten people. In doing so, the artist asks critical questions about the position of the individual, the collective and society. In a time when much debate is polarized, her work is characterized by subtlety. Blom offers a look into the human soul, in all its fragility, and does so in an authentic and autonomous way. The jury also praises her generous attitude in the Dutch art world, in which Blom repeatedly fulfills the role of mentor for young artists. The Heineken Art Prize comes at an important time, now that a new generation of artists and curators is rediscovering Blom’s oeuvre and has become very interested in it. The prize increases this momentum and will create the opportunity for Blom to make new connections.

Image: Ansuya Blom, Concept of Anxiety ’07-’08, photographer: Tom Haartsen, courtesy the artist/Galerie van Gelder

About the Laureate
Ansuya Blom (Groningen 1956) lives and works in Amsterdam. She was educated at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and Ateliers ’63 in Haarlem. Since the late 1970s Blom has worked in various art forms, including drawing, painting, photography, film, text, collage and sculpture. In 1981 she received the Royal Prize for Free Painting. Her films have been shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, IDFA Amsterdam and at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her work is in collections of museums such as the EYE Film Museum, Tate Modern and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. She has had solo exhibitions at the Camden Arts Centre in London, the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and most recently the Casco Art Institute in Utrecht, among others. Blom also holds a master’s degree in psychoanalysis from Middlesex University in London and is an associate member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research in London. Ansuya Blom is an advisor at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and in 2019 was a guest advisor at art institutions in the United Kingdom, South Korea, Suriname and Indonesia. She speaks regularly in public lectures, interviews and panels, most recently at the Nola Hatterman Institute in Suriname, the EYE Film Museum, the Casco Art Institute and De Appel.

Image: Ansuya Blom, Portrait of Susanne U. 3 ’11, photographer: GJ Rooij, courtesy the artist/Galerie van Gelder

Composition of the Jury
The jury of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts 2020 was chaired by Frits van Oostrom, University Professor of Dutch Middle Ages Literature, Utrecht University (member and former President KNAW). In addition, the jury consisted of Patricia Pisters, professor of film studies University of Amsterdam (member KNAW), Aernout Mik, visual artist and laureate of the Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts 2002 (member Akademie van Kunsten), Bart Rutten, director Central Museum Utrecht and Elena Filipovic, director Kunsthalle, Basel.

Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for the Arts 
Alfred Heineken established the prize named after him to recognize and encourage top talent in the arts. Since 1988, the foundation has awarded the prize once every two years to an outstanding artist living and working in the Netherlands. The award consists of a sculpture, a publication and/or exhibition (worth 50,000 euros) and a cash prize of 50,000 euros. Previous laureates have included Peter Struycken, Mark Manders, Barbara Visser, Job Koelewijn, Daan van Golden, Aernout Mik, Guido Geelen, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Yvonne Dröge Wendel and Erik van Lieshout.

For more information, visit www.heinekenprizes.org via Instagram heinekenprizes

Image: Ansuya Blom, photographer Milette Raats