6 July 2023

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2023 of the Akademie der Künste goes to Sandra Vasquez de la Horra

Award ceremony and exhibition will take place in 2024

The Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, who has lived in Germany since 1995, has been awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2023. The jury, consisting of Akademie members Ulrike Grossarth, Raimund Kummer and Ulrike Rosenbach, honours Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, an artist who uses her visual language to address conflicts faced by contemporary society around the world. Her works combine archetypes of our collective consciousness, gender questions and sexuality, intercultural reflections and questions of spiritual practice.

The artist, who now lives in Berlin, grew up in period – following the 1973 putsch by the military junta and Augusto Pinochet’s rule – dominated by torture, kidnappings (desaparecidos) and countless human rights violations lasting over 17 years. It wasn’t until the country’s return to democracy in 1990 that the population was finally able to begin the process of confronting its history. Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s artistic work has been shaped in equal parts by the history of Chile, the examination of her family history, the history and mythologies of the indigenous peoples and the brutal colonial rule of Europeans in Central and South America.

At the centre of Vásquez de la Horra’s drawings, sculptures and installations are human beings in the context of their social and societal environments. Her large- and small-format drawings on paper and cardboard are shaped by their accuracy, density and richness of colour. Some of her drawings are dipped in wax, a treatment that creates more depth and reinforces the stability of the paper, allowing for leporello folds and the creation of spatial objects.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, born in 1967 in Viña Del Mar, Chile, studied visual communication in her hometown, then art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, first under Jannis Kounellis and later under Rosemarie Trockel. Subsequently, as a postgraduate student at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, she continued her education in the fields of photography, film and new media. She moved to Germany in 1995. In 2022 she participated in the 59th Biennale di Venezia. Sandra Vásquez de la Horra will be honoured with extensive solo exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum in 2024 and at the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2025.
The Akademie der Künste will award Sandra Vásquez de la Horra the Käthe Kollwitz Prize on 18 June 2024. The exhibition to mark the award will take place from June to August 2024 at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize, endowed with 12,000 euros, has been awarded to visual artists each year since its inception in 1960. Prize winners of recent years have included Nan Goldin (2022), Maria Eichhorn (2021), Timm Ulrichs (2020), Hito Steyerl (2019), Adrian Piper (2018) and Katharina Sieverding (2017).
The prize, the exhibition and the accompanying publication have been co-financed for 30 years by the Kreissparkasse Köln, which funds the Käthe Kollwitz Museum Köln.
Further information on the prize is available here: www.adk.de/kaethe-kollwitz-preis