Portrait of the artists
Literature and design have their own prestigious awards in Flanders, but the Culture Prizes of the Flemish Community, which were awarded on 1 February in the Kortrijkse Schouwburg, are the highest honours for most areas of arts and culture.
The Flemish Community announces the annual Culture Prizes
Artists being artists, they sometimes make statements. The composer Luc Brewaeys, who rejected his nomination this year, declared: “I would argue for sustained support for composers, rather than a consolation prize.” He made headlines and got the public talking about their own and government’s support of the arts.
Ironically, it makes him a perfect nominee for an award that is often successful at choosing artists who see risk-taking as an everyday part of their jobs and who continue to pioneer in art forms that seem like they must have offered everything they could by now. Not only the winners but the nominations for the Culture Prizes offer a clear picture of the names to watch in contemporary Flemish art and culture.
One of the most pleasant surprises this year was the award of Youth Theatre to Studio Orka, a Ghent-based duo formed only three years ago that offers the most inventive site-specific performances Flanders has to offer. This year’s Berninna, performed in abandoned buildings across Flanders, was a mysterious trip through the home of Russian ghosts. Philippe Van de Velde and Martine Decroos are also illustrators and interior designers, which comes through in slightly unnerving sets that make one feel they are dangerously close to entering a place they shouldn’t.
It’s hard to imagine a more worthy recipient for the Visual Arts Culture Prize than Berlinde De Bruyckere, who deserves to have her name in lights, like fellow Flemish artists Jan Fabre and Wim Delvoye. She is probably best known for her visceral sculptures of twisted and bending flesh, bodies and half bodies in impossible contortions. Her upended horse, meanwhile, made all the newspapers last year when it was exhibited as part of the show of Flemish artists at the National Museum of Singapore. Her work is earthy and emotional and embodies vulnerability and loneliness.
It was also very satisfying to see Peter De Graef, up against the more celebrity names of Bart Meuleman and Tom Lanoye, win for Theatre Writing. Having worked with nearly every Flemish theatre company in existence in his three decades both as writer and actor, he is an institution in the most positive sense – he continues to influence by refusing to remain static. His 2008 monologue Zoals de dingen gaan... (As Things Go...) was a remarkably perceptive treatise on how rewriting one’s own biography is all but impossible.
The Lifetime Cultural Service award this year, which is not based on nominees, went to Eric Antonis, who has a long history of organising cultural events in Flanders, including acting as director of deWarende in Turnhout, revitalising a culture centre that looked ready to implode, supervising Antwerp’s turn as the European Capital of Culture in 1993 and former Culture City Councillor of Antwerp.
Other prizes this year went to:
bOb Van Reeth, Architecture
Leen van Dijck of Letterenhuis, Cultural Heritage
Renzo Martens, Film
David Van Reybrouck, Critique and Essay
Bert Joris, Music
Benjamin Verdonck, theatre performance
Centre for Agrarian History, Food Culture
Onze Nieuwe Toekomst (Our New Future), Volunteer Organisation
