Welcome, dear recipients of the 1st scholarship for drawing and paper art from the city of Waiblingen
It was multilingual in the Waiblinger camera office cellar. The scholarship holders from France, Morocco and Germany were welcomed by Mayor Sebastian Wolf, the board of directors of the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation, Michael von Winning and the director of the Stihl Waiblingen Gallery, Dr. Anja Gerdemann, welcome.
From now on, the main scholarship holder Dr. Katrin Ströbel, professor for free graphics at the Stuttgart State Academy of Fine Arts, and the three young scholarship holders Khadija EL ABYAD (Morocco), Valentine Gardiennet (France) and Nele Hendrikje Sandner (Germany) will work in the gallery and the camera office for four weeks. You're welcome to look over their shoulders: "Open Studios" take place regularly on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. You can find more information at: https://www.papierkunststipendium.de/.
More than 100 young artists from all over the world applied for the first edition of the paper art scholarship. A five-person jury consisting of Katrin Ströbel, Michael von Winning, Board Member of the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation, Thomas Vuk, Head of the Culture and Sports Department of the City of Waiblingen, Dr. Anja Gerdemann, Director of the Stihl Waiblingen Gallery, and Christine Lutz, Director of the Unteres Remstal Art School, selected the scholarship holders. The jury was impressed by the consistently high quality of the works submitted from all over the world. The nationwide unique, cross-generational concept of the mentorship of an established artist in combination with a work phase for the young artists on site in Waiblingen is a success and proves the national importance of the scholarship for drawing and paper art of the city of Waiblingen in the art landscape. The scholarship will be awarded every two years in the future.
Khadija EL ABYAD (born 1991 in Agadir) graduated from the Institut National des Beaux-Arts Tétouan in 2016. She impresses the jury with her fine, graphic works, which are sometimes created out of ink and sometimes out of human hair. French Valentine Giardiennet (born 1997 in Dijon) studied at the Vila Arson, the national center for contemporary art in Nice. Her work is characterized by a naive sign language that fills entire rooms with its oversized formats. In the work of the third scholarship holder, Nele Hendrikje Sandner (born 1991 in Radebeul), paper is the main material: whether in the function of an image carrier, as raw paper mass or cut up and reassembled. Sandner completed her studies at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, in 2021.
The new program is made possible with funds that Renate Reichert bequeathed to the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation - with the condition that they be used "to promote contemporary artists, to promote young artists and to organize exhibitions for such young talents". In cooperation between the Eva Mayr-Stihl Foundation and the city of Waiblingen, in particular the gallery, the concept for the paper art scholarship arose from this order.
