DAE announces winners of Melkweg, René Smeets and Gijs Bakker Awards 2022

The jury was impressed by the quality of all nominated projects and selected the following winners:

• Yassine Ben Abdallah (MA Geo Design) as the winner of the Gijs Bakker Award 2022
• Jelle Seegers (BA Public Private) as the winner of the Melkweg Award 2022
• Dylan Sprik (BA Identity) as the winner of the René Smeets Award 2022

The René Smeets Award for professionalism, Melkweg Award for exceptional talent at BA level and Gijs Bakker Award for exceptional talent at MA level were announced at the DAE Graduation Show during Dutch Design Week. Each award recipient received a €2000 prize and a trophy designed by DAE alumnus Audrey Large.

Yassine Ben Abdallah, The Bittersweet Memory of the Plantation

The history and culture of the oppressed are rarely embodied in material objects. With ‘The Bittersweet Memory of the Plantation’, Yassine Ben Abdallah investigates the disappearance of archival materials regarding the enslaved and indentured labourers of the sugar plantations of La Réunion. Ben Abdallah’s work creates a confrontational encounter where dripping sugar machetes oppose the master’s artefacts, raising the question: whose heritage and history are allowed to be preserved, narrated and immortalized?

Nominees
A total of ten projects were nominated from the five Masters Departments. The other nominees were Alex Werth with ‘The Hypermemetic Garden’, Clara Sweers with ‘Into Each Other’, Janfer Chung with ‘Eyes and Tongues’, Maxime Benvenuto with ‘Looking into the Constructs of a Magic Shitshow. Part 018 The Rhinoceral Bodywork of Design History’, Connor Cook with ‘At the Function (I Shake My Ass)’, Afonso de Matos with ‘Who Can Afford To Be Critical?’, Nick Monro-Meares with ‘Exercises in Learning’, Damián Cehlárik with ‘Housing Society’ and Marte Mei van Haaster with ‘Land-Ally’.

Dylan Sprik, TO DIE FOR

With the experimental video essay ‘TO DIE FOR’, Dylan Sprik ponders upon the obsessive human behaviour that facilitates beauty ideals, and the ruthless power of fashion. Viewers are immersed in the cultural environment of the Victorian era, and are directly confronted with arsenic green, a colour pigment which enjoyed great popularity while having been discovered to be toxic. 'TO DIE FOR’ draws a parallel between the history of the Victorian arsenic green and the recent discovery of microplastics in the human bloodstream. Our use of plastics despite knowing of the dangers to nature might mirror the Victorian obsession with a toxic pigment.

Nominees
The eight other nominees for the René Smeets Award were Gereon Wahle with ‘For Greener Pastures’, Marie Vermeil with ‘Signal Theremin’, Camille Pelissou with ‘All You Can’t Eat: The Frik Show’, Josha Veldheer with ‘Aquifer’, Thomas Mair with ‘Kara’, Jibbe van Schie with ‘Endless Etching’ and Viktoriya Gotseva with ‘Cubcho’.

Jelle Seegers, Solar Metal Smelter

Many fabrication processes are extremely energy consuming. Moreover, the equipment does not spark a creative impulse. With a passion for high-quality tools that are fun to work with, Jelle Seegers set out to design a production line that drastically lowers our footprint, using nothing but the sun, wind, or muscle power as its energy source. The ‘Solar Metal Smelter’ is his pièce de résistance: this huge magnifying glass creates a powerful focal point that, on a sunny day, makes metal melt. Cast in a sand mould, the hot substance is transformed into machine parts for a foot-driven grinder in an off-grid practice. Sharpening any hand tool to the max makes it much easier to follow his lead.

Nominees
The seven other nominees for the Melkweg Award were Bruno Szenk with ‘I=Fe’, Salome Sperling with ‘I grew up with a mirror screaming at me, adapting to my body and the changing seasons. I grew up not so far from the sea’, Leon Barre with ‘Copy Copy’, Chai Dienn with ‘EPICLY supermassive gigonormous humongous fricking colossal capacious monstrous curvacious maHOOsive + whoppingly stupendous and almighty OMG WTF that thing is SOOOOOOOO BIG’, Floor van der Wal with ‘The Impact of Every Second’, Savine Schoorl with ‘Haar Haar’ and Dana Savic with ‘View on a Landscape: the perspectives of mankind’.

Gijs Bakker Award

The jury for this year’s Gijs Bakker Award consisted of Adinda van Geystelen (Artistic Director, Z33), Jonathan Maas (Cultural Journalist VPRO), Priya Swamy (Curator Globalisation and South Asia, Stichting National Museum of World Cultures), Richard van der Laken (Co-founder and Director What Design Can Do, De Designpolitie and Gorilla) and Ewa Scheifes (Art & Culture Programme Maker, Stichting NDSM Werf Amsterdam).

René Smeets Award and Melkweg Award

The jury for the René Smeets Award and Melkweg Award consisted of Ellis Wiggers (Senior Product Designer, Royal Gazelle), José Maase (Head of design, Royal Mosa), Mark Voncken (Chief Marketing & Innovation Officer, Brabantia), Gabriela Sánchez y Sánchez de la Barquera (Creative Director, Vlisco) and Wendy Plomp (Creative Director, Dutch Invertuals).