Suchan Kinoshita awarded the Belgian Art Prize 2025

"Suchan Kinoshita is a uniquely accomplished artist who has, over many decades, achieved a highly comprehensive and complete oeuvre.

The jury's deep appreciation for her visual language extends to the fact that she is an active and committed pedagogue, teaching and mentoring the next generations of artists. Her sensitivity to time and space, and her enduring curiosity for life, create works and projects that are often process based, and in which the viewer becomes aware of the moment. That she interweaves a profound conceptualism with relatable lived experience, generosity and humour has generated the highest possible regard from BAP25."

Suchan Kinoshita (Tokyo, 1960) lives and works in Brussels. She studied rhythmics and later contemporary music theatre at the music academy in Cologne from 1981 onwards. In 1983, as a member of Theater am Marienplatz Krefeld, she worked as a performer, stage and light designer, and script writer of her own pieces. This period was followed by a two-year residency at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (1988-1990). She was selected for the PS1 residency in New York in 1993/1994. In 1992, she won the Prix de Rome in Amsterdam in the category “art and public space” and in 2015 she received one of the Greenberger Awards in New York. In 2021, she started the publishing house Allerleirauh and published Da Capo on the occasion of the cancelled 50th anniversary of Art Basel. Since 2006, she teaches at the Kunstakademie Münster.

Kinoshita’s works deal with combinations of several disciplines. Throughout her oeuvre, one can find elements from theatre and experimental music, two fields in which she was active for some time. Duration (time) and a conscious approach regarding the position of the viewer are two important aspects in her work. No themes, rather an interest in reading between the lines would describe her engagement. Kinoshita considers her work as a space where different works interact with each other but also with the viewer. How these different roles are taken by different players within a specific spatial condition is something she continues exploring. Lately she also engages in making cat sculptures (der siebte Franz) and ragpaintings (Lumpenmalerei).

Her work was shown in several international exhibitions such as the 4th Biennale of Istanbul (1994); Manifesta I (1996); Sydney Biennale (1998); Carnegie International/Pittsburg (1999/2000); eerste huwelijk/tweede huwelijk, M HKA ( 2002); 2007 Skulptur Projekte Münster; In 10 Minuten, Ludwig Museum, Cologne (2010); Operating Theatre, Institut de Carton, Brussels ( 2016); das A und O vom wohnen, LLS Paleis, Antwerp (2018); PLATZhalter taking PLACE surPLACE, Playground in STUK, Leuven (2019); proposition d’en face, contribution for the collection of KANAL-Centre Pompidou Brussels (2019); Gap Walk Gym, as part of Risquons Tout, WIELS, Brussels (2020); Architectonische Psychodramen, Kunstverein Münster (2022); Hängen Herum, Etablissement d’en face, Brussels, (2023).