Aline Thomassen - Shape of the Heart

Aline Thomassen (1964, Maastricht) presents large-scale works that transform the museum’s Projects Gallery into a collective of women, shown in all their strength and vulnerability. Thomassen is the winner of the 2024 Ouborg Prize, The Hague’s most important visual arts award. Shape of the Heart offers an overview of Thomassen’s work from the past fifteen years.

Cruel Tenderness 
Aline Thomassen lives and works between the Netherlands and Morocco. Her work explores the many ways in which Moroccan women experience and express their identity. She is inspired by the strength and survival instinct of the women she meets. In her female figures, Thomassen attempts to give form to our complex psychological landscape. Many of her watercolours have what the Moroccan-Dutch writer Hafid Bouazza has beautifully described as a ‘cruel tenderness’. Thomassen’s exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag provides an impressive survey of these monumental portraits in which universal themes such as the female body, motherhood, love and loss form a common thread.

Winner of the Ouborg Prize 
The jury praised the Thomassen’s exceptionally energetic and consistent oeuvre, in which she depicts powerful female figures in a colourful, flowing style in large-scale watercolours. Her work deals with essential themes such as love, loss, violence, freedom, death, pain and inner struggle and does not shy away from contradictions.

From the jury report: “Thomassen is not afraid of the world around her and seeks encounters with the unknown, the other, beyond her own bubble. With her work, Thomassen succeeds in capturing contradictions: the essential themes in life that are both personal and intimate and connect us as human beings.”

Ouborg Prize 
This is the nineteenth time that Stroom Den Haag, the Municipality of The Hague and the Kunstmuseum have joined forces to showcase the winner of the Ouborg Prize in an extensive museum exhibition. Thomassen received the prize on 29 November 2024 from The Hague’s Councillor for Culture Saskia Bruines. The award comes with a cash prize of €25,000 as an incentive for the artist's further practice and a solo exhibition at Kunstmuseum Den Haag. The Ouborg Prize is a joint initiative of the Municipality of The Hague, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag and Stroom Den Haag.  

The Ouborg Prize is named after the Hague-based artist Pieter Ouborg (1893-1956). Through the prize, The Hague expresses its appreciation of the high level and broad significance of the nominees and the extent to which they contribute to the artistic climate in the city and to its international allure. From 2024, the prize will be awarded every four years.

The exhibition Shape of the Heart can be seen until 30 March 2025.