21 December 2021

2021 Will Grohmann Prize goes to Zoë Claire Miller

The Akademie der Künste is awarding the 2021 Will Grohmann Prize to the Berlin-based US artist Zoë Claire Miller. Endowed with EUR 6,000, the prize will be presented during the awards ceremony for the Berlin Art Prize on 18 March 2022 at the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz.

The jury is composed of Akademie members Ulrike Lorenz and Siegfried Zielinski and the 2018 prize-winner Kolja Reichert. In their citation, they write: “Zoë Claire Miller’s work is exemplary for three reasons: her formal inventiveness; her conception of sculpture resulting from this; and her politics of collaboration that accompany both. Miller’s works not only have many heads and eyes, but they also speak with many tongues. (…) In collaboration with other artists and incorporating animals and plants, Miller pursues the wilding of her output and artistic labour that opens itself up to a creative process shared with other actors, human and non-human. In doing so, Miller updates the notion of social sculpture for contemporary forms of organisation under the conditions of digital networking and image circulation.”

The jury stresses appreciatively that Miller’s art is closely tied to her political engagement. As the spokesperson for the berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin (bbk berlin), she has contributed to significant structural improvements in the working conditions of Berlin artists.

Zoë Claire Miller, born in Boston in 1984, studied philosophy, ethnology and Romance studies at the University of Heidelberg from 2003 to 2005 and sculpture (diploma) at the Karlsruhe State Academy of Fine Arts from 2005 to 2010. In 2008, she spent a guest semester at the College of Fine Arts at the UDK Berlin. She is co-founder of the Alternative Berlin Art Prize launched in 2013 and has been spokesperson for the Coalition of the Independent Art Sector. She has been on the board of bbk berlin since 2016 and its spokesperson since 2018.

The Will Grohmann Prize-winners of recent years include Kolja Reichert (2018), Nadine Fecht (2014) and Nasan Tur (2012). The irregular awarding of the prize is due to the foundation’s financial situation.
More about the benefactor Will Grohmann and the prize here.