EINDHOVEN.- The Theodora Niemeijer Prize 2016 was awarded to Sissel Marie Tonn. This was announced on Thursday evening 7 July during a ceremony in the auditorium of the Van Abbemuseum. Tonn will develop the project Intimate Earthquake Archives in Het Oog (The Eye) in the Van Abbemuseum for half a year, starting on 27 September 2016, and in addition receives prize money of €10.000. The jury believed that her proposal many different fields of knowledge – technology, nature, science, data and visual culture – come together in a very consistent and surprisingly intimate way. Tonns intrinsic engagement in this project feels very substantial and therefore very sincere.

The second place is for Marieke Gelissen, the third place for the duo Lotte van der Woude en Rosa Johanna; they will receive €2.500 and €1.500 respectively. During this second edition of the Theodora Niemeijer prize, the jury had to select from almost 90 project proposals.

The Theodora Niemeijer prize was introduced in 2012 by the Stichting Niemeijer Fonds and the Van Abbemuseum because women are still a minority in exhibitions and museum collections. The prize is awarded once every two years to an artist living and working in the Netherlands who graduated at most five years ago. It is the only Dutch prize for visual arts dedicated specifically to women artists. Previous winners were Sachi Myachi in 2014 and Sarah van Sonsbeeck in 2012.

Intimate Earthquake Archives
Intimate Earthquake Archives is a proposal by Sissel Marie Tonn in which she wants to explore the relationship between human experience and an environment undergoing change. It’s an interactive installation that allows participants to access and experience all the earthquakes recorded in Groningen - related to the gas drilling - to date.

Sissel Marie Tonn
Sissel Marie Tonn (1986) is a Danish artist living in The Hague. She works with multi-media installation, drawing and writing, and her processual approach is driven by a great deal of curiosity and the possibilities of building relationships across fields. Her work builds upon an interest in ‘presence’ within ecologies undergoing subtle or profound changes. Within this discourse the work explores these environmental (often humanly induced) changes, extending the public debates towards epistemological issues connecting these events to the body and its sensing of presence. She completed a master in Artistic Research at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague in 2015. She is the cofounder of the artist initiative Platform for Thought in Motion together with artist Jonathan Reus.

The jury
This year’s jury consisted of Saskia Bak (director of Museum Arnhem), Annie Fletcher (chief curator exhibitions Van Abbemuseum), Isolde Hallensleben (programme maker, presenter, columnist), Wendelien van Oldenborgh (artist), and Antoon Ott (board member Stichting Niemeijer Fonds).