Viktoria Stefanova wins Noorderlicht Award 2025
On Tuesday, 17 June, the Noorderlicht Award 2025 was presented to Viktoria Stefanova for her graduation project Lost in Two Eras. The award is intended for graduating students of Academie Minerva and the Frank Mohr Institute, and includes a €1,000 prize to support the further development and presentation of the winning work during the Noorderlicht Biennial Machine Entanglements (12 July – 7 September 2025).
Lost in Two Eras explores the tension between the fast pace of digital life and the longing for a slower, analogue world. Through a quiet and poetic visual language, Viktoria sensitively renders this contrast tangible. The jury praised the work as “subtly powerful, conceptually clear, and emotionally right on target.”
The Noorderlicht Award is presented annually to a graduation project that innovatively connects lens-based media with current societal and technological issues. This year’s jury consisted of Roosje Klap (director of Noorderlicht) and Rosa Wevers (guest curator at Noorderlicht).
Honourable Mention: Iris van Kalsbeek
An honourable mention was awarded to Iris van Kalsbeek for her installation The Land Where Animals Kiss — an experimental erotic film in which nature and sensuality intertwine to form an ecosystem of desire. The jury commended the work for its “poetic depth and sensual force,” highlighting how it challenges taboos around female sexuality and advocates for slower, more intimate forms of connection in a digitally overstimulated world.
Nominees 2025
The 2025 nominees, selected by tutors from Academie Minerva and the Frank Mohr Institute, showed a marked interest in performativity, multimedia, and obsolete technologies. Themes such as nostalgia, slowness, and digital overwhelm ran throughout the selection.
The nominees were (in alphabetical order):
- Joana Catarino Antunes
- Manon Dessainte
- Sofie Fazeli
- Eva Hoogenberg
- Sadaf Khani
- Anna Musikhina
- Letizia Roccaro
- Ro de Ruiter
- Viktoria Stefanova
- Bogdan Toader
- Clarion van Zanten
Visit Machine Entanglements this summer and discover the work of Viktoria Stefanova and many others at various locations throughout the North of the Netherlands.
