Exhibitions:
Modularküche and Transmitting the Wind

Jury:
Ulrike Boskamp, Liliana Gomez, Alistair Hudson, Ronald Kolb

It is with great pleasure that we announce our 2025/26 award recipients: Eda Aslan and the collaborative project Modularküche by Paula König, Liliana Escalhão, and Johann König have been selected as the recipients of the 2025/26 Advancement Awards of the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung.

The call for the 2025/26 Advancement Awards of the Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung was based on the curatorial programme Art as Ecological Practice, led by artistic director Ronald Kolb. It invited artistic approaches that engage in research-based and participatory work at the intersection of art, science, ecology, and sustainability. The aim was to support projects that open up new perspectives on ecological and societal questions. Particular emphasis was placed on experimental research approaches and the development of new, process-oriented works without predetermined outcomes.

The jury selected two proposals that take distinct approaches but share a high level of artistic expertise and a strong interest in the study of plant life—especially its complex historiographies, symbolic and identity-forming meanings, and its embedding in everyday practices of use. The chosen projects address, among other themes, cultural strategies of appropriation through plants, translocal cooking cultures, and historical connections between food, migration, and colonial systems of knowledge.

The awards were decided by a panel of experts including Liliana Gomez (Professor of Art and Society, University of Kassel), Alistair Hudson (Director of the Centre for Art and Media, Karlsruhe), Ulrike Boskamp (Board Member, Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung), and Ronald Kolb (Artistic Director 2025/26, Arthur Boskamp-Stiftung).

Awardees

The artist Eda Aslan explores plant migration, botanical exile, and narratives of ecological nativism. At the centre of her proposal is Impatiens parviflora, a once-cherished, later combated plant whose history traces back to the Nazi era.

Eda Aslan (*1993 in Istanbul) is an artist based in Hamburg. She studied Fine Art at Marmara University in Istanbul, as well as at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg in the Department of Time-Based Media. In her artistic practice, she explores the political, ecological and geographical traces embedded in circulating raw materials, moving between sculpture, text, sound and archival research. Most recently, she was awarded the Max Pechstein Prize (2025), the Karl Ditze Prize (2025) and the Working Grant for Fine Art from the Hamburg Ministry of Culture and Media (2026).

Modularküche is a collaborative project by Paula König, Liliana Escalhão, and Johann König, which merges artistic and culinary practices. The project begins with an engagement with regional foods and seasonal recipes from Central Portugal and Northern Germany—as carriers of local histories, ways of life, and climatic conditions. At its core lies a translocal practice shaped by personal encounters, exchange with local gardens, and working with vegetables as materials—including as colours, pigments, and images. Modularküche invites participants to collective cooking events, interdisciplinary workshops, and a publication-based presentation.

Paula König (*1993, Kiel) is an artist based between Lisbon and Ostholstein. Her site-specific practice combines research, painting and critical perspectives on extractivism. Her projects have recently taken her to Svalbard, Portugal, Scotland and Czechia, among other places.

Liliana Escalhão (*1983, Castelo Branco) is a chef and concept developer in Lisbon. Her plant-based cuisine combines creativity, care and community. She has led the cultural project Primeiro Andar and a vegetarian-vegan restaurant at the Hangar art centre, among other things. Her workshops and formats focus on plant-based, holistic cuisine – driven by intuition, knowledge and social responsibility.

Johann König (*1999, Eutin) studied communication design in Hamburg. With a background in sociology, he designs projects on social and ecological topics. Participatory concepts and critical design approaches play an essential role in his work. Most recently, he has been exploring common goods and the possibilities for their design.