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Henri Winkelman Award 2019 / Winners

Willem de Kooning Academy
Wed 29 May

On Wednesday, May 29, 2019, the Foundation Ondernemersbelangen Rotterdam has awarded the Henri Winkelman Award to the young entrepreneurial creatives for the seventh time. The Award Night, organised by Willem de Kooning Academy (WdKA), has become an evening full of creative, innovative entrepreneurship, inspiration and cooperation.

The Henri Winkelman Award is an incentive prize for young enterprising artists and designers in Rotterdam, alumni of the Willem de Kooning Academy and consists of an award of € 10 000 and this year, for the first time, the second prize of € 5 000.

The Henri Winkelman Award was founded six years ago as a tribute to the legacy of Henri Winkelman, with the primary goal of stimulating the creative industry of Rotterdam. The prize is supported by the Willem de Kooning Academy and Stichting Ondernemersbelangen Rotterdam and encourages young innovative entrepreneurs on their way with two incentive prizes. Read more about the Award and past winners here...

Jury panel Henri Winkelman Award 2019:

The jury has carefully reviewed the applications of the eight shortlisted nominees and has asked them all about their professional practices, dreams and plans for the future. The enormous diversity of the nominees' work this year is a reflection of  Rotterdam's creative industry and cultural sector. The winners of the Henri Winkelman Award 2019 are:

Stacii Samidin and Seb Agresti

Stacii Samidin

Visual Anthropologist Stacii Samidin goes home with the First Award. Stacii is working on an ongoing project, where he makes the hidden worlds visible. Photography is his native language and his images possess a very high artistic level. Stacii is building up his own legacy, inspired, among other things, by Bruce Davidson. His ambition is joining Magnum, a dream of many photographers. In addition, Stacii possesses entrepreneurial talent: he is not just a photographer, but a director. His approach to every project makes clear how passionate he is about his search for the ultimate image. Stacii invests everything he has to make the journeys he simply must make possible. His work has his full devotion and he is able to generate a good income from it. He will invest this award in the realisation of his dream: setting up his own gallery in Rotterdam to share his photography and vision of society with us.

Seb Agresti

Seb Agresti receives the Second Award. Seb creates images for contemporary topics. He boasts a breathtaking list of customers: The New Yorker, New York Times, NBC News, WHO SEE, See All This Magazine, Google, Apple, Monocle Magazine and de Volkskrant. He also works on diverse assignments such as album covers, posters, flyers, packaging, murals and book covers. Seb understands the contemporary media and, during his studies, has made every effort to learn according to a set plan. First, as an intern at Joost Zwarte's studio, and in 2014-2018 - as an assistant. The assistant role was a part of The Bigger Plan and the most important skill gained from it is translating the customer's wish into a broader concept. Seb Agresti wants to use this prize money to pay for an international residence in Japan where he plans to learn new techniques that are taught exclusively there.

Henri Winkelman Award 2019 shortlist:

Jury report Henri Winkelman Award 2019 (in Dutch)

Special thanks to this year's Henri Winkelman Award identity designer Myrna de Bruijn!