18 december 2025, Flor Linckens
Kevin Osepa awarded the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025
Kevin Osepa is the winner of the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025. His new installation "Lusgarda", currently on view at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, is the work that persuaded the jury to award him the prize. The distinction was granted in recognition of his oeuvre as a whole and comes with a cash award of €60,000. The prize was presented by Koen Becking, State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science. A companion publication, produced in collaboration with Jap Sam Books, was also launched during the ceremony.
The Prix de Rome is one of the most prestigious and influential incentive awards in the Netherlands and the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. Organised and funded by the Mondriaan Fund since 2012, the prize is awarded every two years to artists whose work opens up new perspectives and contributes to the development of the field. In Osepa, the jury recognised an artist with a distinctive visual language and a layered, complex practice.
In "Lusgarda", the work Osepa created for the Prix de Rome exhibition, the artist addresses the ritual of Ocho Dia, the eight-day mourning period following a funeral on Curaçao. This ritual forms the starting point for an installation that not only reflects individual loss but also points to a collective loss: the gradual disappearance of knowledge, rituals and customs passed down from generation to generation. Grief is therefore not presented as a closed chapter but as a process that continues to repeat and transform.
The installation unfolds as a total experience in which film, objects, textiles and handmade figures come together to form a new reality. Domestic materials acquire symbolic meaning, while recognisable elements are interwoven with images and codes that resist immediate interpretation. The space invites visitors to look, feel and move along, without imposing a single, fixed reading. Osepa previously stated in an interview with Unseen: "I often incorporate symbols in my work that resonate with people from the Afro-Caribbean community. I abstract it and place it in a new context. I use these symbols as a means to communicate in a more intuitive way than literature, for example, can. The highest compliment for me is when someone from the island, without any background in art, says they feel something when they look at my work. That way, art can be a form of healing, because people can see a part of themselves reflected in it."
Kevin Osepa is a versatile artist working across a range of media, including film, installation and photography. A sense of belonging lies at the heart of his practice, while his work also explores themes such as sexuality, masculinity, social justice, Afro-Caribbean culture, (oral) history and diaspora, (post)colonialism and (Afro)spirituality, often approached from a personal and queer perspective. He draws inspiration from the magical worldview of his island of birth, as well as from blind spots and one-sided representations within society. In "Lusgarda", several of these strands come together in a moving work that engages with grief, loss and memory, while also addressing care, community and the transmission of stories.
Winning the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025 underscores Osepa’s position within the contemporary art world, both nationally and internationally. The jury report noted: "The jury presents the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025 to Kevin Osepa for his overwhelming and moving installation. Lusgarda is a vibrant work that elevates both the recognizable and the concealed to a higher poetic level. The jury sees an artist with a highly distinctive visual language who has developed rapidly in both terms of narrative and expression, and continues to surpass himself. In Lusgarda , all elements intertwine. Like a director, the artist empowers his collaborators, revalues a culture, and simultaneously delivers a work of great technical refinement while remaining true to his own narrative. The jury believes that with this work, and his strongly developed oeuvre, Osepa can stand alongside artists of international stature and represents a major promise for the future."
Kevin Osepa was born in 1994 in Willemstad, Curaçao and studied Photography at HKU University of the Arts Utrecht. His work is informed by personal experiences and childhood memories, as well as by rituals, mysticism and the stories of older generations from the Dutch Caribbean. Often a small idea or fragment forms the starting point for a work that develops into a shared experience, aimed at collective healing and a deeper understanding of identity. The resulting works are intensely personal while also engaging with broader social questions. Osepa is represented by Galerie Ron Mandos.
The artist has received several awards for his practice. In 2022, he won a Golden Calf for Best Short Film at the Netherlands Film Festival for his film "La Ultima Ascension". In 2018, he was nominated for the Volkskrant Visual Arts Prize and in 2023 he received both the Charlotte Köhler Award and the Amsterdam Award for the Arts. His work has been included in the collections of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, ING and the Rijkscollectie, among others. In the summer of 2023, Buro Stedelijk invited him to temporarily relocate his studio to the Stedelijk Museum, allowing visitors to gain insight into his artistic process.
The jury of the Prix de Rome Visual Arts 2025 consisted of Colin Huizing (director of the Chabot Museum), Imara Limon (head of curators at Amsterdam Museum), Rita Ouédraogo (co-founding curator of Buro Stedelijk, researcher and writer), Wilma Sütö (curator of modern and contemporary art at Dordrechts Museum), Joep Vossebeld (curator at Odapark Venray and writer) and Eelco van der Lingen (director of the Mondriaan Fund).
