“Like always, visiting the graduation shows brings a lot of energy and excitement. This year was not different; however, something has changed. Despite the playful diversity, it is as if the pandemic period only now brings its fruits. The focus on personal and private issues has grown stronger, so strong that it reaches outside the private domain. This collective idealism strives to create a better, safer world. The identity and community issues are vibrant and the world problems dominating the media are absent. Once again, personal becomes political. An interesting year.”

– Radek Vana (Curator of Best of Graduates)

Marcos Kueh | KABK, The Hague

Kenyalang Circus (2022) embodies Marcos Kueh’s search for a critical stance to the neoliberal fetishism of “icons”. With this project, Kueh highlights the use of visual iconography in advertising through the lens of graphic design and visual art. Extrapolating from his roots from the Malaysian side of Borneo and the island’s commodification and exotification as ‘Malaysia’s exotic unknown’ ‘the land of the orang-utans’, Kueh questions the significance of post-colonial independence which resulted in a forced position of role-playing into the expectations of the West.

Menno Pasveer | KABK, The Hague

Menno Pasveer (1998) graduated this summer as a painter from the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. His work is often autobiographical, but also about painting in general. His painting is not limited by one style and moves just as easily from hyperrealism to abstract expressionism. Within one painting, he often combines different styles at the same time. One thing is definitely constant through his work: his love for painting.

Romina Koopman | Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam

Romina Koopman is intrigued by how the digital image can change our perception of reality. She positions herself in the grey area where the tangible and virtual worlds converge, questioning the role of the screen as a border. Her work reflects on how the photographic medium, within the digital era, creates a new ever-evolving truth.

Sophie Engels | St. Joost School of Art & Design, Breda

Sophie Engels is an interdisciplinary artist born in 1997 in Roermond, the Netherlands. She grew up in a small town in the south of the Netherlands and is now based in Rotterdam. Recently she graduated from Sint Joost Arts and Research in Breda. Her graduation project “No man’s land” is awarded with the St Joost Penning provided to her by the school, as well as the city of Breda.

Bobbi Essers | HKU, Utrecht

Born in Enschede on January 26th of the year 2000, on the verge of a new millennium. Essers even as a child was mesmerized by the power of stories. Especially those regarding adventure and friendships. Basing her ideas of it on the sometimes fake and exaggerated versions shown in coming of age stories.

Sjoerd van der Heyden | HKU, Utrecht

Sjoerd van der Heyden (1998, Nijmegen) is a young artist who recently graduated from HKU Fine Art in Utrecht. He mainly works with installations, sculptures, video and drawings. His work is best described as absurd, full of action, humorous, quick and diverse. In his process he is in search of a childlike form of playing. By using rules, Sjoerd creates playgrounds for himself where he collaborates with friends and other artists.

Jasper van den Ende | Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam

Jasper van den Ende is a lens-based visual artist whose photography practice expands into the realms of the urban environment. Whether he engages with the camera as a technological apparatus or with the building transformed as camera obscura is irrelevant. As long as it allows him to navigate the three-dimensional world by rendering his experience into a two-dimensional surface.

Jiyan Düyü | Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam

Jiyan Düyü was born on June 23, 1995. She grew up in Amsterdam with a Dutch mother and a Kurdish father. After high school, which she completed at Geert Groote College, she focused on acting. She developed into an actress in six years by participating in various drama collectives and training courses. In addition to acting, the visual arts also played a prominent role. She was admitted to the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and after the Basic Year continued her studies at the VAV-moving image department.

Frida Berntsen | ArtEZ, Arnhem

Frida Berntsen (Nijmegen, 1997) is a Dutch artist living and working in Arnhem. During her first years at artschool at the AKI in Enschede, her interest shifted from painting to a broader spectrum of media, with a special interest in textile. For this, she moved to Arnhem, to develop this further, an academy with a rich history in this medium. A recurring theme is that she is looking how craft and tradition can be of meaning today.

Ain | KABK, The Hague

Nurul Ain Bini Nor Halim (Malaysian, 2000) goes under the artist name Ain. She graduates this summer in Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Arts, The Hague, Netherlands. Ain was born in Thailand, raised in Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan, leading her to have a diasporic identity and longing for belonging. Her practice jumps from videos, audios, installations and collaboration-based works but her works are still focused on themes such as belonging, language, memories, national and cultural identity.

Kamiel Scholten | Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam

Kamiel Scholten’s work focuses on humans and the surroundings they create for themselves. This comes from his own interest and fascination for the way people are and behave. He wants to show them as they are in their daily – unique – form of being. Therefore he often photographs them in their own environment, as this tells something about who they are, and at the same time it is a place where they are at ease.

Fedrik Vaessen | St. Joost School of Art & Design, Breda

Fedrik Vaessen was born in The Netherlands in 1994 and lives and works in Tilburg. In 2022 he received his BA from St. Joost School of Art & Design in Breda. He has exhibited works and sold them at MotMot Gallery and has organized a group show at De Blauwe Dwaas when still studying. Now he got mutiple offers to exhibit his graduation sculptures and is currently working at the Stadsgallerij on the project ‘Bij/Na’, a working period made possible by the Stedelijk Museum Breda