eghbal joudi awarded the 2026 Karin Hollweg Prize

eghbal joudi has been awarded the 2026 Karin Hollweg Prize for his series ‘Zero-Orbit-Degree’. With prize money of 18,000 euros, the Karin Hollweg Prize is one of the most generously endowed prizes for emerging artists in the fine arts in Germany. Half of the prize money is normally linked to a solo exhibition. eghbal joudi’s solo exhibition will take place at the Künstler:innenhaus Bremen.

This year, the prestigious award featured three notable highlights: the generously endowed sponsorship award celebrated its 20th anniversary. For the first time, the jury – comprising experts from museums and exhibition venues – was joined by a specialist juror from outside the region. Furthermore, due to the pandemic, the HfK Bremen has recorded its largest ever graduating cohort of Master’s students in Fine Art for the year 2026, totalling 28 graduates.

Twenty of them are featured in the group exhibition ‘Once You’re There It’s Easy To Find’ at Haus Coburg | Städtische Galerie Delmenhorst, which runs until 2 August inclusive. 

eghbal joudi (born in 1990 in Tehran, Iran) initially studied sculpture at the Tehran University of Art before commencing his degree in Fine Art at the University of the Arts Bremen in 2020, under the supervision of Prof. Heike Kati Barath (painting) and Prof. Natascha Sadr Haghighian (sculpture). He completed his Master’s programme under Prof. Haghighian. eghbal joudi was recently awarded an annual scholarship for 2026 by the Janusz Korczak Foundation in Bremen.

In his serial work ‘Zero-Orbit-Degree’, joudi explores the question of how images of historical events and collective memories come into being. In the exhibition ‘Once You’re There It’s Easy To Find’ at Haus Coburg, he engages with the history of Iranian society and draws on one of the most significant poems in modern Persian literature. The poem *Zemestān* (زمستان, ‘Winter’) by the Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales was written a few years after the overthrow of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. It is interpreted as a coded political allegory of the period following the failure of Iran’s democratisation efforts, a time characterised by fear, isolation and hopelessness.

The artist’s background in sculpture is particularly evident in the installation of his paintings: joudi stages his works spatially. For the installation of his paintings, he selects materials tailored to the exhibition space and involves the visitors by, for example, at Haus Coburg, allowing his paintings to cascade into the room from above – much like the presentation of a textile object – or mounting them freestanding on metal frames. Instead of a traditional hanging arrangement, he detaches the works from the wall, positions them at an angle within the space and lends his paintings a three-dimensional, almost sculptural quality.

"His spatially installed paintings explore the political image. In numerous versions, he reworks a historical event from 1953 in which the democratisation of Iran was thwarted. Without explicitly addressing the situation in his country of origin, eghbal joudi uses his paintings to stage encounters with Iranian poetry, history and resistance movements. 

His gestures of repetitive representation, overpainting, omission or reworking of historical documents present the historical narrative as an implausible façade and invite viewers to embark on their own search for clues. A quotation from a poem by the Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan, which eghbal joudi has transferred onto the window of the Städtische Galerie in Delmenhorst, provides a faintly visible hint of the speechlessness and coldness found in authoritarian systems. As an expression of oppression, Mehdi Akhavan spoke in 1955 of a winter – in the middle of summer. 

One of the artist’s particular strengths is his ability to avoid drawing parallels with the current situation. Instead, he weaves together painterly gestures that shift within the space, tilt away from the walls, or, as delicate strips of paper, are stirred by the slightest breath of wind. Various pictorial and staging practices overlap in eghbal joudi’s exhibition space, triggering associations without offering any verifiable content. We think we recognise something; we are justified in assuming that the artist draws on press photographs and everyday news reports, yet ultimately we are left to our own devices. Through this sensory engagement of the audience, he succeeds in transforming an intense examination of the consequences of Iranian politics and its iconic photographs into a collective experience. All the stories and images that exist alongside the historically fixed narratives appear and disappear simultaneously. In doing so, eghbal joudi achieves an impressively contemporary reinterpretation of painterly principles and possibilities, and emphatically demonstrates how essential art is in the day-to-day political reality and the flux of images, each of which claims or simulates its own truth." 

• Anne Thurmann-Jajes (Head of the Centre for Artists’ Publications, Weserburg Museum of Modern Art)
• Dr Matilda Felix (Director of the Delmenhorst Municipal Gallery)
• Dr Arie Hartog (Director of the Gerhard Marcks Haus)
• Toby Kamps (Head and Curator of Modern Art, Kunsthalle Hamburg)
• Maxie Kiwitter (Assistant Curator, GAK Society for Contemporary Art)
• Dr Andreas Kreul (Karin and Uwe Hollweg Foundation)
• Dr Ingmar Lähnemann (Director of the Städtische Galerie Bremen)
• Marie Oucherif (Artistic Director, Künstler:innenhaus Bremen)
• Dr Annett Reckert (Curator of the Kupferstichkabinett, Kunsthalle Bremen) 
• Dr Frank Schmidt (Director of the Museen Böttcherstraße).