Meet the nominees for the NN Art Award 2026: I Fiona Lutjenhuis

This year marks the tenth edition of the NN Art Award. The annual incentive prize of €10,000 is awarded to a talented artist who completed their education in the Netherlands and presents work at Art Rotterdam (27–29 March at Rotterdam Ahoy). The professional jury nominated four artists: Fiona Lutjenhuis (Galerie Fleur & Wouter), Tina Farifteh (Gallery Vriend van Bavink), Mandy Franca (Night Café Gallery) and Kyra Nijskens (Prospects / Mondriaan Fonds). From 14 March to 25 May 2026, work by all nominees will be on view at Kunsthal Rotterdam.    

Fiona Lutjenhuis’s youth was shaped by an exceptional context: she grew up in the Malva sect, a religious community in a village in Brabant, which she left behind at the age of sixteen. This closed sect drew on an eclectic mix of theosophy, esoteric cosmology, secret societies and beliefs surrounding supernatural and extraterrestrial life. Lutjenhuis translates this ideological legacy and her personal memories into a hybrid visual language, enriched by archival research. Her work is not a literal reconstruction, but rather a symbolic and poetic retelling, often infused with humour, as a way of getting some grip on her past. The resulting works frequently combine playful and grim elements. For Lutjenhuis, her practice is a way of reinterpreting her exceptional childhood without attaching judgement to it. She approaches the world from a rational, autonomous and agnostic worldview, while at the same time retaining a spiritual curiosity about could might possibly exist.  

At Kunsthal Rotterdam, Lutjenhuis presents, for example, two large folding screens titled "I Flourish Into Chaos" (2024). On the panels, the leaders of the sect appear as birds of prey: owls and a hawk. Floating buildings with seemingly transparent walls depict scenes from her family history, in which people are rendered as static Japanese kokeshi dolls. This visual language is not a coincidence: the Malva sect regularly appropriated elements from different religious and cultural traditions. The all-seeing eye that recurs on the screens refers to Geza-4, the planet that is regarded within the sect as the ultimate place of refuge.  

The artist often creates works that evoke a sense of domestic shelter, including a birdhouse and a painted light-blue bed construction with the telling title "Family Trip". In that work, the bed frame is transformed into a sandbox with small sandcastles, causing the piece of furniture to lose its domestic function and literally turn into a charged landscape. Lutjenhuis’s oeuvre is populated by human, animal and extraterrestrial figures and engages with themes such as belief, power and submission.  

Fiona Lutjenhuis was born in Zevenaar in 1991. She studied at the ArtEZ University of the Arts in Arnhem and subsequently took part in the residency programme at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. Her work was previously shown at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Het Noordbrabants Museum, 1646, the Dordrechts Museum, Schiphol Airport, the H3H Biennale and Drawing Centre Diepenheim. It is held in the collections of, among others, the AkzoNobel Art Foundation, Museum Helmond and SCHUNCK Glaspaleis.  

Fiona, could you tell us more about the work you are presenting at Art Rotterdam and at Kunsthal Rotterdam?  

The work I am showing at Art Rotterdam is an installation with a combination piece of furniture as a bed, with a mosquito net, paintings, sculptures and soft toys. For this presentation, I deliberately chose a setting in which I feel safest and where I can retreat for a moment, even at an art fair. The imagery in the paintings is based on dreams that have stayed with me: a world between sleeping and waking, a place where I like to be and where rules can be distorted. Once I wake up, I am often disappointed that everything is once again governed by social, political and natural rules. Despite the fact that I have many nightmares, I also love sleeping, because the world then feels more fluid, as a form of escape. Three paintings are presented in which dreams are depicted.  

For Kunsthal Rotterdam, I have two folding screens in mind, which together form the work "I Flourish Into Chaos" (2024). I made these two screens based on the ten entities from other planets that were central to my parents’ religious beliefs. The entity that was discussed most was Master Ankhmania. The masters, also known as the guardians, are depicted on the reverse side as conical forms.  

Within the screens unfolds a pine forest populated by birds, including birds of prey and an owl. Notably, the owl is not counted among the birds of prey. The birds stand for the entities believed to inhabit birds. They hold us like dolls. The dolls in the floating houses represent metaphorical scenarios from our household. For me, the combination of birds and dolls conveys the feeling that I was protected, but at the same time also controlled. Out of fear of the unknown, I hoped that the entities from other planets would look like birds.  

The eastern influences that often recur in my work have a clear origin. As a child, I was convinced that my previous life had taken place somewhere in Asia. My father affirmed that idea: he believed he had lived in Scotland in a previous life and my mother in France or Spain, where she was labelled a witch. Absurd, of course, but within my childhood imagination and the context in which I grew up, this felt entirely normal.  

In addition, I have a strong preference for Japanese, South Korean, Thai and Chinese design. What appeals to me, for example, is that in South Korea, art and design are not separated. I believe that's a realistic way of looking at culture: as a whole in which belief, art and daily life are interconnected. For the folding screens, I also looked at their origins. They travelled from China to Europe and gradually became westernised there. Both works contain quite intimate references to my own worlds and those of my parents and the religious sect. By presenting these references in a playful, childlike way, I hope to soothe myself and make the whole more bearable.    

What are your plans for 2026?
This year, I started compiling drawings, together with publisher Terry Bleu. That book will be published in March. In addition, I am working on two presentations abroad, although unfortunately I cannot share anything about those just yet.

I am also busy ticking off everything I still want to do. It think it's important to realise the work I truly want to make, without later regretting that I never did it. To that end, I collaborate a lot with other artists and makers, combining our crafts and challenging one another. In this way, boundaries continue to be pushed.  

From these collaborations, a new, free presentation will also emerge. In that context, experimentation is a plus. For me as an artist, it is the driving force that keeps the engine running.  

Can you describe how you felt when you heard that you had been nominated for the NN Art Award?
I felt honoured, but also somewhat conflicted, as I’ve also been nominated for another prize recently [the Prix de Rome, ed.]. At the same time, I am very grateful that I am able to take up space as an artist and represent my imagination and the horror within it. It makes me happy that I am being welcomed into the art world with this work.  

What project would you take on immediately if you were to win the award?  
I would love to curate an exhibition myself with other makers and artists, working from project-based collectives. What I truly dream of are large installations in which others can physically enter our worlds. For me, one work is basically half a work. I enjoy creating series with multiple layers and contexts, in which all kinds of stories emerge. I would therefore like to realise a show in which a great deal of work comes together, with room for others to also take their place within it. I would want to curate that exhibition myself.  

The winner of the NN Art Award 2026 will be announced on Friday 27 March at Kunsthal Rotterdam. During this festive evening, all exhibitions, including the NN Art Award exhibition, will be freely accessible to invited guests.  

Written by Flor Linckens