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 National Socialism.

Eda Aslan (1993, Istanbul) is an artist and researcher. Her artistic practice weaves botanical microhistories together with questions of exile, memory, and political landscapes. Most recently, she realised the performative reading project Second Chapter, Kayısı, Tsirani, Mish mish, Apricot, Aprikose at Kunstverein Hamburg, and the solo exhibition An Island to Another Island; a Poem to Another Poem (2025, Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof). In 2024, she was a fellow of the Hamburg Cultural Foundation at Hinterconti.

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 living between Lisbon and East Holstein. Her site-specific practice combines research, painting, and critical perspectives on extractivism. Her recent projects have taken her to Svalbard, Portugal, and Croatia.

Liliana Escalhão (1984, Fundão) is a chef and concept developer based in Lisbon. Her plant-based cuisine fuses creativity, care, and community. She has led the cultural project Primeiro Andar and a vegetarian-vegan restaurant at the art centre Hangar. Her workshops and formats centre on a plant-based, holistic approach to cooking—guided by intuition, knowledge, and social responsibility.

Johann König (1999, Eutin) studied communication design in Hamburg. With a background in sociology, he develops projects on social and ecological topics, most recently focusing on the cultural significance of glacial erratics in Northern Germany.