Following extensive deliberation from the jury, this year’s prize went to experimental ceramic artist Jongjin Park for Strata of Illusion, a chair-like structure made by coating many sheets of paper in porcelain and layering them together in a captivating millefeuille of pastel tones that collapsed in on itself—an effect Park explained was unintentional and happened in the kiln. The jury was taken with the hard-soft duality of the work, combining the fragility of the paper with the structure of the porcelain. “It belied the true nature of its materiality and I think that’s why we felt that it is a testament to how expansive ceramics are,” said Abraham Thomas, curator of modern architecture, design, and decorative arts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Park’s win was announced by the Japanese-Korean singer Giselle, during a humid Singapore evening that brought together an energetic gaggle of vibrantly dressed attendees who sipped on champagne and cheered on the finalists. In addition to Park, who won the €50,000 prize money, South Korean artists had a strong presence overall in this year’s shortlist, with six finalists representing the nation. “Korea is really a very important country in contemporary craft. In other parts of the world, we have to explain what we think about craft and what we want to support and what we are concerned about,” said Loewe. “And in Korea, it’s not the case, we don’t have to teach them anything!”
Alongside the top prize, two special mentions went to Graziano Visintin, an Italian jewelry designer who made a pair of necklaces comprised of strings of delicate cubes made from thin sheets of gold, and a 3-meter-wide wall tapestry developed by the Ghana-based Baba Tree Master Weavers as “a living anthropological document” of Ghana’s Frafra communities. The piece was woven from elephant grass and made in collaboration with Spanish artist Álvaro Catalán de Ocón and used overhead drone photography to map the tapestry’s richly textured pattern.
These explorations of cultural heritage appeared alongside deconstructed forms and unexpected media combinations, which emerged as recurring themes throughout the shortlist. Chinese artist Nan Wei created a small crimson sculpture from lacquer, leather, and linen, while an arresting two-meter-tall conical structure by Japanese artist Nobuyuki Tanaka was created using kanshitsu, a dry lacquer technique that dates back over 1,300 years and lent the imposing form an inky depth.
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