Piet Zwart Institute alumna Fine Art Esmé Valk (2008) has won the International Contemporary Art Prize Diputació de Castelló and received her award worth 60,000 euro. Her work 'Showcasing Today's Essentials' will enter the Diputació de Castelló collection.

The jury chose Esmé “because her installation is an aesthetic and historical exploration of the artistic correspondence between the geometry of designs for display cases and shop windows and their relationship with architecture, theatre and commercial concepts rooted in economic aspects and a drive towards marketing. Symmetry, a core axis of many of these disciplines, serves the artist as an artistic-historic ground base for a profound examination while at once lending particular attention to the artistic component in rendering the installation. The subtlety in the execution of the display and the exquisite realisation of the video, somewhere between performative, narrative and historic, earned it the approval of the jury who chose it as the winning work in this competition and it will now join the Diputación de Castellón's collection”.

The Willem de Kooning Academy Rotterdam University congratulates Esmé and wishes her the best of luck in her future career!