Nominees for a Dutch Design Award 2021 in the Young Designer category Bodil Ouédragaogo and Bob Hendrikx each received a ‘Keep an Eye Foundation - Young Designer Grant’ of 9000 euro. What have they been doing since then?
Bodil, how are you? Can you give us two highlights from the past year that were made possible by winning the Keep an Eye Foundation cheque?
“I travelled to Burkina-Faso in April for part of my research into the art of dressing up. This time I focused on heirlooms and jewellery. In the same vein, I also previously went to Lagos Nigeria for a presentation of the capsule collection I created in collaboration with Patta. And finally, I went to Casablanca, Morocco with the Nieuwe Instituut for an art exchange. It is partly thanks to the Keep an Eye cheque that I was able to do all of this. And furthermore, in recent months I have started focusing on making larger textile prints which will form the basis of my new work.”
“I would like to say to this year’s three nominees: try to see the cheque as a kind of freedom to delve deeper into parts of your work that you normally wouldn’t have space and time for due to limited financial support.”
Bob, how has the past year been for you? What have you been able to do thanks to winning the Keep an Eye Foundation cheque?
“Things have moved really fast! I also won the Public Dutch Design Award last year with my Living Coffin made from mushrooms, and that design was included in funeral insurer DELA’s collection last month. And so, the visionary idea of a compostable coffin is now a serious option for people to enrich the earth after their death. With the help of the Young Designer Grant from Keep an Eye, I was able to experiment with sea anemones. This has resulted in a new project ´Living Bin´, which investigates how we can process waste using ecosystems. Sea anemones are the recyclers of the sea and can also reproduce very quickly. What makes the project extra fun is that the colourful and alien-like anemones come from the ´boring´ North Sea. I will present my new works ‘Living Bin’ and ‘Living Roadblock’; at Dutch Design Week 2022.”
“I would like to tell this year’s new Young Designers that it’s important to stay true to yourself and to keep your goal in mind. Dare to follow your intuition, especially if it’s a crazy idea. Take risks and keep pushing, but also listen to your body. You got this.”
