laureates
Lorie Ballage holds an MFA from the Bergen Academy of Fine Arts and has exhibited extensively in Europe, including solo exhibitions at Pragovka Gallery (Prague, CZ), Norsk Billedhoggerforening (Oslo, NO), The Wrong House (Kortrijk, BE), and Buskerud Kunstsenter (Drammen, NO).
Her work lies at the intersection of ceramic sculpture and immersive installation. Her practice explores water as both material and metaphor, combining hand-formed ceramics with recycled materials, sound, and scenographic narration to create environments that blur the boundary between the familiar and the strange. Lorie Ballage seeks to reveal the poetic and political potential of failure, absurdity and the unused, making ceramics not only a material for fabrication, but a tool for critical questioning.
Uriel Caspi earned a BFA in ceramics from the Bezalel Academy in Jerusalem, followed by an MFA from Alfred University in New York. Since completing his studies, he has exhibited in museums, galleries and art fairs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Israel, Taiwan and Japan.
Uriel Caspi has worked internationally as a university researcher and artist in residence, notably at the Archie Bray Foundation (Montana), the Yingge Ceramics Museum (Taiwan), the EKWC (Netherlands), Cercco–HEAD Geneva (Switzerland), Höchster Porzellan Manufaktur (Germany), and the Northern Clay Centre (Minnesota), among others. His awards include the Hecht Award for Emerging Artist (2019), the Artist Grant (2023), and the McKnight Fellowship (2024).
Danny Cremers works with hand-crafted porcelain. Trained in fashion design at Central Saint Martins, he explores classic forms through subtle imbalances and imperfections. His vases carry a silent tension between freedom and control, with textured surfaces and loosely constructed forms. Attracted by the energy of sketching — open, intuitive, without concern for finality — he seeks to capture this same immediacy in each of his finished pieces.
Kira Fröse is a visual artist specialising in sculptures and installations made from glass, ceramics, plaster and found objects. In 2017, she obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts (sculpture) from the AKI ArtEZ Academy in Enschede, the Netherlands.
From 2018 to 2022, Kira lived and worked as an artist in Rotterdam (Netherlands). In addition to her own artistic practice, she also assisted other artists in their studios, including Anne Wenzel, Maaike Kramer and Stephan Marienfeld. Kira Fröse's works are part of several Dutch art collections, including those of the Museum LAM (Lisse), the Museum Jan Cunen (Oss) and the Stichting Kunst & Historisch Bezit A.S.R. & Aegon.
Ninon graduated from the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier in 2017 and the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 2021. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions and has completed several research and creative residencies. "Ninon Hivert, like an archaeologist, captures the anonymous, the mundane, and gleans the urban. Her ceramics are imprints, plastic translations of familiar and generic forms: clothing, accessories, everyday objects, always close to the body.
She uses clay for its mimetic potential, modelling reality by recreating it, repeating it, in temporalities similar to those of painting and photography, where revelation follows a period of drying and setting. Her practice is one of transcription, in series, but this time resolutely manual: from one object to another, from one material to another, from touch to sight, from memory to gesture. Mimicry is not so much in the final appearance as in the work in progress that is allowed to emerge. Andréanne Béguin.
Santiago Insignares-Martínez's artistic career began in Bogotá and took him to Rome and then San Francisco. Ceramics became his main focus after he moved to Germany, where he studied under Professor Isa Melsheimer at the Muthesius Kunsthochschule. This period earned him institutional exhibitions and participation in the 12th Gyeonggi International Ceramic Art Biennale in 2024.
Santiago draws inspiration from both ancient and modern ruins to create sculptures that offer a critical reflection on systems in crisis. Through playful appropriations and reconstructions, he assembles colourful ceramic structures that explore the relationship between architecture and identity, while evoking nostalgia for childhood building games and the journey to adulthood.
Faye Papargyropoulou is a ceramic artist and designer based in Athens. In 1992, she began studying art and design, thanks to a scholarship in industrial design. After twenty years as creative director at major advertising agencies, she founded her own agency, ABOUT: CREATIVE AGENCY.
In 2020, she took a new step in her creative journey by opening her own ceramics studio, CERAMIC 47. Based in Athens, this personal space for artistic expression allows her to create unique pieces that highlight the beauty of imperfection and challenge traditional notions of form and functionality. Through her work, she combines the past and the present, reflecting a deep appreciation for art, nature and contemporary design.
Marie Pic graduated with a DNSEP in art, specialising in ceramics, from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art et de Design in Limoges in 2021. A resident of the CAP Saint-Fons workshops since 2024, she explores the notions of passage and threshold through sculptural forms that combine architecture and the plant world. Bas-relief doors and gates, inspired by Art Nouveau or 17th-century jewellery, combine formal rigour with organic motifs, where ornamentation becomes structure.
Angelika Stefaniak is a visual artist born in 1997 in Jawor, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (Master's degree in sculpture, 2024). Her practice combines ceramics and textiles, rooted in an intuitive process, a childlike perception and dreamlike distortion.
Inspired by psychology, anthropology and biomorphism, she seeks beauty in the grotesque, creating sensitive and tactile forms that oscillate between sculpture and object. Winner of the OP_YOUNG 2024 programme and recipient of a grant from the Polish Ministry of Culture, she has exhibited her work at OP ENHEIM, Galeria Miejska in Wrocław, Apteka Sztuki in Warsaw, as well as at international events in Łódź and Olomouc.
Born in China and educated in Beijing and Berlin, Walter Yu studied German literature at Beijing Foreign Studies University before obtaining the title of Meisterschüler at the Berlin University of the Arts.
His work has been exhibited throughout China and Europe and has won several awards. Yu explores the poetic intersection between classical East Asian aesthetics and contemporary visual storytelling. With a background in painting, Yu extends his practice to ceramics and sculpture, creating forms that resonate with both scroll painting and architectural space. His ever-evolving glazing techniques seek to establish a dialogue between clay and surface, between the tactile and the pictorial, evoking a pictorial sensibility that challenges the boundaries between mediums.
