Yuqi Wang wins Reisma van den Burg Stipendium 2025

Yuqi Wang (1985, Chongqing) has won the Reisma van den Burg Stipendium 2025, the biennial €10,000 award for promising recent graduates of Academie Minerva. The prize was awarded in the presence of the Board of the Reisma van den Burg Cultuurfonds.

About the winning proposal

With Kitchen Time, MA Painting (’21) alumnus Yuqi Wang makes the time embedded in the kitchen visible. He gives discarded kitchen utensils a new form and creates ritual rice paintings. As the material dries and weathers, it reveals traces and patterns that are otherwise invisible. Supported by the stipend, he will develop new sculptures, staged photography, and performances in 2025–2026, to be brought together in a sculptural installation with a public presentation in 2026.

From the jury report

"A very complete presentation where materiality is used in a powerful way. Sculpture, painting, photography and performance come together harmoniously and strengthen each other. Time is an essential theme in both the presentation and the proposed research. Wang highlights the often invisible work of women, and their time spent in the kitchen, which is not sufficiently recognized in society. In his previous work, Wang  "painted" with rice over photographs, thus incorporating the cultural theme of food in a very visceral sense. In the proposed project, rice will again be an important element; now in a performative and sculptural way, while showing the passing of time while the rice changes form. The jury sees great potential in the research phase in Chinese kitchens in Wang's hometown and in bringing back physical elements of those kitchens to create a new sculptural and clock-like works; transforming traces of time into a new visual language. The invitation towards the Chinese immigrant community in the Netherlands to become performers in his work, is a very valuable part of the project."

Nominees

From 32 submissions, Nayul Kim, Radina Kordova, and Anna Lebedieva were also nominated alongside Yuqi Wang.

Jury

• Dorothea van der Meulen (director Academie Minerva) chair

• Barbara Rink (artist and tutor Fine Art

• Susanne Luurs (artist and tutor Fine Art and Design in Education and Fine Art)

• Roísín Douglas (independent curator, project manager, fundraiser, and editor)

About the stipend

The Reisma van den Burg Stipendium is a biennial €10,000 award for recent graduates of Academie Minerva. The grant supports the step from research to production and presentation and is named after painter Cor Reisma (1902–1962).