Every two years, the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds presents the Sieger White Award, a prize named after the artist couple Fred Sieger (1902-1999) and Helen Sieger-White (1911-2010). In 2012, two years after Helen's death, the award was created by the Sieger White Foundation.
The prize consists of a stipend of 25,000 euros, which is awarded to painters from the East of the Netherlands, specifically artists up to the age of 35. The winners receive a podium and are invited to reflect on their work. The awarded amount will be used for a publication, which will be presented during a solo presentation at Galerie Maurits van de Laar that runs from 8-26 November 2023. This year Simone Albers will receive the prize, an artist from Nijmegen who is represented by gallery O-68 in Velp. In 2019, Albers was already nominated for the Royal Award for Modern Painting and her work was previously shown in a solo exhibition in Museum het Valkhof. Albers obtained her BA Fine Art at ArtEZ School of the Arts Arnhem.
Albers: "It feels really special to receive the Sieger White award this year! I was happily surprised when I received the news from the Prince Bernhard Cultuurfonds. I was already considering to make a publication for a long time, so this award comes at a good time. I can't wait to get started, under the guidance of Mirjam Westen."
Philosophy and scientific research play an essential role in Simone Albers' practice: two scientific disciplines that deal in different ways with understanding our existence. The artist is inspired by the improbability, absurdity and complexity of our human existence. For example, how many things had to coincide — at the atomic and molecular level — to create our current ecosystem? And how can you stretch that idea further by looking at our universe? Albers is particularly fascinated by the patterns and laws that underlie them, and he looks for parallels with painting. She also regularly wonders where exactly the limits of our cognitive capacity are.