4 June 2024

The Murmur of the Cosmos: Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2023

Exhibition, 19 June – 25 August 2024
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg

Invitation to the press tour
Tuesday, 18 June 2024, 11 am
Exhibition hall open from 10 am

With
Sandra Vásquez de la Horra,artist
Siegfried Zielinski, media theorist, member of the Visual Arts Section at the Akademie der Künste
Anke Hervol, exhibition curator, Visual Arts Section
Welcome address: Manos Tsangaris, President of the Akademie der Künste

To register for the press tour, please email presse@adk.de

To coincide with the presentation of the 2023 Käthe Kollwitz Prize to Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, the Akademie der Künste is showing the exhibition The Murmur of the Cosmos in the Akademie building on Hanseatenweg. The large-scale installation El Manto de Obatalá will be presented in a site-specific setting along with selected drawings, photographs and objects by the artist. The prize will be awarded on 18 June at 7 pm, and the exhibition opening will take place afterwards.

Based in Germany, Chilean artist Sandra Vásquez de la Horra uses her work to explore some of the conflicts facing contemporary society around the world, combining issues of gender hierarchies and sexuality, intercultural reflections and spiritual practices with archetypes from our collective consciousness and social taboos. The artist draws on dreams, memories and the unconscious to create poetic imagery centring on human existence – explicitly women and the female body. Her work is influenced not only by her country’s history but also by her examination of her own family history, the mythologies of the Indigenous population and European colonial rule in Central and South America.
De la Horra’s large- and small-format drawings on paper and cardboard rely on precision and are animated by the artist’s use of compression and colour. Some of the works she makes with graphite, gouache and pencil are fixed in a wax bath, giving them a material and physical quality.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra was born in 1967 in Viña Del Mar in Chile, where she studied visual communication before going on to study fine art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, under the tutelage first of Jannis Kounellis and later of Rosemarie Trockel. She continued her education at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where she focused on photography, film and new media. She relocated to Germany in 1995. Her work featured at the 59th Biennale di Venezia in 2022 and is currently on display in a large-scale solo exhibition at the Denver Art Museum (2024), to be followed in 2025 by a show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich.

A book will be published in conjunction with the exhibition.

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize, which comes with an award of 12,000 euros, has been given to visual artists on an annual basis since 1960. Recent recipients include Nan Goldin (2022), Maria Eichhorn (2021), Timm Ulrichs (2020), Hito Steyerl (2019), Adrian Piper (2018) and Katharina Sieverding (2017).

The Käthe Kollwitz Prize has been co-funded by the Kreissparkasse Köln, which sponsors the Käthe Kollwitz Museum in Cologne, since 1992.

The Murmur of the Cosmos: Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
Käthe Kollwitz Prize 2023
Akademie der Künste, Hanseatenweg 10, 10557 Berlin, tel. 030 200 57-2000
Award ceremony and exhibition opening
Tuesday, 18 June 2024, 7 pm, free admission
with Magdalena Atria Barros, Katharina Koselleck, Ulrike Grossarth, Jenny Graser, Manos Tsangaris and Sandra Vásquez de la Horra
Exhibition
19 June – 25 August 2024
Tue–Fri, 2–7 pm, Sat & Sun, 11 am – 7 pm
€ 6/4, free for under-18s and on Tuesdays and the first Sunday of each month

Press pictures can be downloaded here.

Press contact
Brigitte Heilmann, heilmann@adk.de, tel. 030 200 57-1513
Mareike Wenzlau, wenzlau@adk.de, tel. 030 200 57-1566