Jos Brink Prijs 2017

The Jos Brink Prize is given to a person or to an association who achieved a fundamental contribution to the acceptance of homosexual and transgender people in Dutch society.

During my research, I discovered that this community is formed by individuals, who are experiencing their gender identity variously. There is no two the same person who feels the same way as the other. The objective was to develop a project that focuses on the uniqueness of these individuals.

The contribution of the winner was social, the winner did not achieve for his own good, but for a collective goal. My aim with my design was to represent this social effort and create a prize that can be shared amongst the people of the community or those who supported the winner’s intention. With my project, I wanted to involve the whole Netherlands and its people. I wanted to cherish the diversity in people and point out that every human touch leaves traces in others. Thus, it’s important how we treat each other without any judgment on their sexual preference.

Based upon my grid over the Netherlands, I was visiting several different coordinates of the country and asking people to treat soft porcelain as it would be another human being. In the end, all the porcelain pieces were knotted together and given to the winner of the Jos Brink Prize, Ellie Lust.

For me, it was also important to collect personal stories and connect to different people during my travel in The Netherlands. Each destination is documented and preserved in videos and eventually in a book.