Through the PLAYGROUND ART PRIZE, we at GALERIE VON&VON are making a long-term commitment to supporting emerging artists and fostering the development of innovative artistic approaches. Supporting art students is a central priority for us – driven by our conviction and with an eye toward the future of contemporary art. The art prize offers students at German-speaking art academies the opportunity to present their work for the first time in the professional setting of a gallery. In doing so, we create a platform that not only provides visibility but also facilitates entry into the art world.
The award winners are selected annually by an independent jury composed of directors and curators from renowned institutions. Once again this year, we were able to assemble a high-caliber jury:
Angela Stief, Director and Chief Curator of Contemporary Art from 1945 Onward, Albertina Modern, Vienna
Dr. Claudia Emmert, Artistic Director, Kunstmuseum Bonn
Anna-Catharina Gebbers, Curator, Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art, Berlin
Benedikt Seerieder, Curator, Museum Brandhorst, Munich
Dr. Daniel Zamani, Artistic Director, Museum Frieder Burda, Baden-Baden
We warmly congratulate this year’s winners:
1st Prize: Sophie Constanze Polheim (Hamburg University of Fine Arts / HGB Leipzig)
2nd Prize: Lin Htet Aung (Städelschule Frankfurt)
3rd Prize: Jiacheng Li (Städelschule Frankfurt)
In her artistic practice, Sophie Constanze Polheim explores how meaning is constituted and conveyed through material, as well as how social power relations are inscribed within material structures. She does not view material as a passive medium, but rather as an active agent that generates forms of knowledge and helps shape political, social, and cultural processes. Drawing on extensive research at the intersection of theory and practice, she weaves together historical fragments with contemporary perspectives, particularly feminist and ecological ones. Her work spans sculpture, textiles, photography, readymades, and text, forming large-scale bodies of work. She is interested in the processes of storing and transmitting knowledge, as well as in the question of which materials, bodies, and practices are recognized as carriers of history and insight. Traditional techniques such as weaving and felting are combined with digital methods such as 3D modeling and programming. Recent works explore textiles as archives and repositories of information, examining gaps, invisibilities, and alternative forms of historiography.
Lin Htet Aung’s practice examines the interconnections between faith, propaganda, migration, and political power from the perspective of the working class in Myanmar. He explores the mechanisms through which information, rumors, and ideologies circulate long before they are historically contextualized. His works draw on religious imagery, political narratives, and everyday forms of knowledge, transforming them into counter- narratives. Working across installation, film, sculpture, and found materials, he explores how meaning is created through translation, mediation and different approaches to information. Since moving to Germany, his focus has increasingly turned to the transformation of faith and identity in exile. Digital reproductions, makeshift materials, and displaced symbols serve as vessels for a “temporary religion” that oscillates between memory, loss and adaptation. By combining archival material, religious references, and alienated visual and linguistic forms, the work creates poetic yet eerie constellations that critically examine mechanisms of power, visibility, and collective belief.
In his artistic practice, Jiacheng Li explores the role of images in the construction of historical memory and the mediation of political realities. Shaped by his relocations across Southeast Asia, China, and Europe, he is interested in the interconnections between identity, migration, and belonging, as well as in how history is shaped by visual representation. Drawing from archival photographs, early films, and oral histories, Li constructs scenes that blur docu- mentation and fiction. Through painting, he considers the image as an active site where power, myth and speculation converge, and neutrality is not possible. In doing so, he focuses on the lingering effects of colonial and imperial structures in contemporary visual cultures and social narratives. His works examine how notions of nation, progress, and cultural identity are generated, disseminated and reinforced. By combining historical sources with visual shifts and reinterpretations, ambiguous visual spaces emerge that challenge dominant narratives and open up alternative interpretations.