The 25th HAP Grieshaber Prize and the prizewinner Nana Petzet
Every year, the VG Bild-Kunst, the Stiftung Kulturwerk, the Stiftung Kunstfonds and the Deutscher Künstlerbund award the HAP Grieshaber Prize to an outstanding artist. Despite its high esteem in the art world, this prize has so far been little known. The founders urgently wanted to change this and commissioned us to produce a short film that not only introduces the prize itself, but also the current prizewinner, Nana Petzet.
Film portrait of the artist
In 2023, Hamburg-based installation and performance artist Nana Petzet was awarded the prize. In her works, she repeatedly addresses topics such as man-made environmental pollution, biodiversity and sustainability. Nana Petzet creates connections between art, nature and science by collaborating with scientists who complement and enrich her artistic methods with their expertise.
For filming in the studio with Nana Petzet
We met Nana Petzet in her studio in Hamburg and were able to gain an insight into her artistic processes. How she approaches her questions almost like a researcher and thus creates her works of art. As part of the award ceremony, the artist will be showing her work »Blendung« in the Deutscher Künstlerbund space in Berlin in January 2024. This addresses the issue of light pollution in public spaces by simulating a lunar cycle using spherical lights that also serve as traps. Which insects fly to the artificial light sources? Which ones don't? Together with scientists, she analyses the results and presents them for the first time in the exhibition, which was created exclusively for the premises of the Deutscher Künstlerbund.
What is the HAP Grieshaber Prize all about and who receives it?
Our short film also sheds light on the background to the HAP Grieshaber Prize. Who was HAP Grieshaber? Why is there a prize named after him, and a highly endowed one at that? Who are the award sponsors? We also answer these questions in our short film. We conducted three very interesting interviews on the premises of VG Bild-Kunst in Bonn. There we met Dr Urban Pappi, Managing Director of VG Bild-Kunst, Dr Karin Lingl, Managing Director of Stiftung Kunstfonds and Dr Anke Schierholz, Head of the Legal Department at VG Bild-Kunst. Just this much: HAP Grieshaber was a German graphic and visual artist from Upper Swabia, who became known above all for his large-format woodcuts and was very committed to the interests of artists. He was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of VG Bild-Kunst. Incidentally, we also explain what the »HAP« in his name stands for.