Alexis Blake has won the €40,000 Prix de Rome, the oldest Dutch art award. The Amsterdam-based American artist was chosen from a shortlist that also featured Mercedes Azpilicueta, Silvia Martes and Coralie Vogelaar. The prize is awarded biennially to an artist under the age of 40.
Blake is known for a performance practice which looks at the politics of representation, the body and feminism. At an exhibition of the shortlisted artists at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (on view through 20 March), she developed Rock to jolt [ ] stagger to ash which, working with dancers, took the outlawing of women’s lamentation – cathartic wailing and high-pitched exclamations – by the ancient Greeks as its starting point. The jury praised Blake for the manner in which she ‘immersed herself in lamentation as an expression of mourning, a topical subject, for the pandemic has caused people to suffer great losses.’
‘The artist studied the lament from a feminist perspective as a means of protest. This took her all the way back to antiquity, when the lament was forbidden as a form of art. Silencing is a form of repression – of the voice, but also of the emotions. Blake studied various periods in history, for forms and customs leading to physical expression – because that is what a lament does; it brings out, without censorship, what is inside. How people do this is determined by gender, race, socio-economic situation, sexuality and other influences Blake is able to harmoniously bring together in classic dramaturgy, exceptionally staged.’
The Prix de Rome dates back to 1808 when Louis Napoleon introduced the award format. More recent winners of the prize include Erik Andriesse (1988), Adriaan Geuze (1990), Charlotte Schleiffert (1999), Gianni Cito (2001), Lonnie van Brummelen (2005), Ronald Rietveld (2006), Pilvi Takala (2011), Falke Pisano (2013), Magali Reus (2015) and Rory Pilgrim (2019).
