In 2025, we awarded the third Antwerp Art Graduation Prize. With this prize, Antwerp Art seeks to support the development of young artists not yet associated with any organisation. Every year, two students with a master’s degree in fine arts are selected based on their graduation projects: one from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp (KASKA) and one from Sint Lucas Antwerp (SLA). The Graduation Prize consists of a cash prize and an exhibition of new work during Antwerp Art Weekend.

Discover the works by Charlotte Daniëlse (KASKA), and projects by Marta Meers, Maleza Colectiva (SLA), at M HKA, our central location during Antwerp Art Weekend, on the museum's 6th floor.

In 'the earthworm/digging i did', Charlotte Daniëlse takes the nitrogen issue in Europe—zooming in on Zeeland, where she has her roots—as a starting point. An issue that manifests itself in a decline of biodiversity due to sour and oversaturated soil. In a video installation, she adopts a bottom-up perspective experienced through the protagonist: an earth worm. She touches on our relationship with food, soil and the sculpting and changing of the landscape. At the same time, the invisible element nitrogen attempts to become visible.

Continue reading about the work here.

The work on view at M HKA during Antwerp Art Weekend is the first phase of this project. A second phase will be on view Autumn 2026.

Credits:
Time Slice camera: Victor Van Rossem
Sound design: Taco Drijfhout
Music: Maya Dhondt, The London Vegetable Orchestra
Special effects: Sarah Lauwers

The production of 'the earthworm/digging I did' is supported by The National Lottery, the Nitrogen work group of the Province Zeeland and Nesse Terneuzen. 

Charlotte Daniëlse lives and works in the Low Countries. In her practice, she questions the use of language as means of communication, with a focus on pre-verbal narratives, intuition, connection, and subjectivity. She investigates how we shape our inner worlds and explores the tension between what can be expressed and what remains unsayable, within a world filled with noise and absurdity.

She obtained a BFA and MFA with a specialization in photography at KASK, Ghent, and completed an additional MFA in sculpture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. After yearsof studying and searching she remains driven by an appetite for knowledge and skills, which she nourishes through projects, exhibitions and residencies. She is currently an artist in residence at Nesse (NL) in the Shared Urgencies program.

'Projection for a Spoiled Soil (P.F.A.S.S.)' is an evolving artistic research platform addressing the PFAS, or “forever chemical,” crisis in Antwerp and beyond. Born from the contamination of Marta's grandparents’ garden, this project transforms the M HKA rooftop into a space for encounters where artists, scientists, journalists, and affected communities converge. This initiative is rooted in the shared practice of Maleza Colectiva, growing from their ongoing conversations about care, art is positioned as resistance.

Through a series of workshops they invited communities across Belgium and the Netherlands directly impacted by PFAS to grow their own mycelium cinema screens. These root-like fungal networks are a biomaterial that carry the trace of its specific location and the hands that collaborated with them. Assembled into a mosaic cinema screen, this living surface will host a curated selection of short films about soil pollution and ecological resistance. The films will be projected in a loop during Antwerp Art Weekend.

• '(Y) Our Salad Grew In A Scandal' by Marta Meers, Richard Willems And Rita Van Nieulande
• 'Deixem Passar' by Gabriella Achadinha
• A short film teaser of 'A Bigger Monster - A chemical exodus from Italy to India' by Gianluca Liva and Filippo Tommasoli

PFA(rt)S presents ‘landscape of exposure’: a multi-media installation exploring the tension between our physical proximity to pollution and our societal inability to see it, challenging us to face the reality of accountability on a forever polluted planet. Audiences are invited not only to reflect but to actively engage with these realities as they experience the work.

The group exhibition as part of the Antwerp Art Graduation Prize Exhibition is hosted by Maleza Colectiva. Participating artists: Delta van Melle, Noortje De Brouwer, Dayana Corzo Joya, Emma de Cicetty, Mark van Hoek, and Marta Meers.

• Thursday, 14.05: Opening Performances on M HKA's rooftop.

20:00-21:00 A lecture-performance by investigative journalist Stéphane Horel (Le Monde) and a poetic testimony by my grandfather, Richard Willems. This marks the first public screening of our film curation on the living mycelium mosaic. 

• Saturday, 16.05: PFAS Panel Picnic.

11:00-13:00 Moving from the rooftop to the Zuidpark, you are invited to join an informal picnic talk hosted by P.F.A.S.S.. Join in turning reflection into action, uniting citizens, institutions, and policymakers through the power of art and knowledge. Together with environmental lawyer Isabelle Larmuseau, journalist Stéphane Horel, Tatiana Santos from the European Environmental Bureau, together with representatives from Grondrecht, the Corporate Europe Observatory, and more…. 

Continue reading about the works here.

Marta Meers is a Belgian visual artist whose work grows between film, installation, and ecological research. Her practice began with collaborative short documentaries and evolved into material experiments with fungi and mycelium, unfolding a broader investigation into soil, care, and contamination. She holds an MA in Socio-Political Visual Arts from Sint Lucas Antwerp.

Maleza Colectiva is an ecofeminist art collective founded by Dayana Corzo Joya and Marta Meers, that cultivates artistic and ecological resistance through site-specific interventions, collective spaces and cinema. Through these encounters, they explore how personal and political histories intertwine, creating spaces where storytelling, remediation, and critical reflection meet.

Leuvenstraat 32, 2000 Antwerp (6th floor)

14.05, 12:00-23:00
15.05, 12:00-18:00
16.05, 12:00-18:00
17.05, 12:00-18:00

The Antwerp Art Graduation Prize exhibition is generously supported by the players of the National Lottery.

Antwerp Art would like to thank the following spaces for supporting the 2025 Antwerp Art Graduation Prize:

Annie Gentils Gallery, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Base-Alpha Gallery, Coppejans Gallery, De Zwarte Panter, Eva Steynen Gallery, GNYP Gallery, Het Bos, Keteleer Gallery, MASEREEL, MORPHO, Newchild, Pizza Gallery, Rik Rosseels Gallery, Shoobil, and Tim Van Laere Gallery.