Shape of the Heart

Most important visual arts award

This year’s Ouborg Award, The Hague’s most important visual arts award, will be presented to Aline Thomassen. She will receive the award from the city’s councillor for culture, Saskia Bruines, on Friday 29 November. The opening will coincide with the award presentation. The Ouborg Award is a joint initiative of the Municipality of The Hague, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Stroom Den Haag.

The jury was impressed by the artist’s exceptionally energetic and consistent body of work. Aline Thomassen creates powerful and colourful images of women in large-scale flowing watercolours. Her works address essential themes such as love, loss, violence, freedom, death, pain and psychological struggles. She does not shy away from contradictions.

Aline Thomassen
Aline Thomassen (1964, Maastricht) lives and works in the Netherlands and Morocco. Her work explores the many ways in which Moroccan women experience and express their identity. She is inspired by the strength and survival instinct of the women she meets. In her female figures, Thomassen attempts to give form to our complex psychological landscape. Many of her watercolours have what the Moroccan-Dutch writer Hafid Bouazza has beautifully described as a ‘cruel tenderness’. Thomassen’s exhibition in the Projects Gallery at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag provides an impressive survey of these monumental portraits in which universal themes such as the female body, motherhood, love and loss form a common thread.

The Ouborg Award
The Ouborg Award is The Hague’s city award for visual arts, named after the Hague-based artist Pieter Ouborg (1893-1956). Through the Ouborg Award, The Hague expresses its appreciation of the high level and broad significance of the nominees and the extent to which they contribute to the artistic climate in the city and to its international allure. From this year, the award will be presented every four years.