Schering Stiftung

Prize winner 

Portrait Sung Tieu

Portrait Sung Tieu
Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski

Sung Tieu

Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2024

Portrait Sung Tieu
Photo: Nadine Fraczkowski

Sung Tieu

Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2024


The research-driven work of Sung Tieu (b. 1987, VT) reflects on nuanced dynamics between individual lives and overarching systemic forces. Through installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, text, video, and sound, she investigates archival, bureaucratic, and institutional frameworks that govern inclusion and exclusion, legality and illegality.

In the exhibition 1992, 2025, the artist interrogates the post-Wall repercussions for the Vietnamese contract workers of the former GDR and migrants like herself, examining how the socio-political conditions of the time shaped social roles and communities with lasting impact. Tieu foregrounds 1992 as a pivotal reference point—the year of her arrival in Germany, which is also marked by a wave of nationwide right-wing extremist violence, further exacerbated by the actions of state institutions, including the police. Frequently adopting a critical perspective on her immediate working environment, Tieu takes a new commission as an opportunity to implement institutional changes at KW, set to take effect in 2025.

Sung Tieu is the recipient of the Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research 2024, which has been awarded jointly since 2020 with the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion. In addition to prize money, the award includes an exhibition for which the artist creates new work as well as a publication.

The Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research is supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion and awarded in cooperation with KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

The exhibition will be curated by Léon Kruijswijk.

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Exhibition of Award Winner Sung Tieu in the KW 

Art Award — February 15 – May 04, 2025

The presentation of Tieu's artistic work at KW Institute for Contemporary Art is her first major institutional solo exhibition in Berlin.

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The Jury 

Emma Enderby is director of KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin since 15 May 2024. She is a curator, writer, and lecturer of modern and contemporary art. Recently she was the Head of Programs and Research/Chief Curator at Haus der Kunst, Munich, in 2021–2024.
Since starting at Haus der Kunst, she curated Liliane Lijn. Arise Alive, Tony Cokes: Fragments, or just Moments, and a decentralized exhibition with Rirkrit Tiravanija. Previously, as Chief Curator at The Shed, New York, the British curator worked on founding the new institution, the overall multi-disciplinary program, and curated the retrospective exhibition Agnes Denes: Absolutes and Intermediates, as well as Tomás Saraceno: Particular Matters, Ian Cheng: Life after BOB and exhibitions and commissions with Trisha Donnelly, Tony Cokes, Oscar Murillo, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Carrie Mae Weems. Emma Enderby held positions in various institutions like Public Art Fund, where she curated the group exhibitions Commercial Break and The Language of Things, as well as Tauba Auerbach: Flow Separation, among others. As exhibitions curator at the Serpentine Galleries, London, she organized numerous projects and exhibitions including with Hilma af Klint, Rachel Rose, Trisha Donnelly, and Adrián Villa Rojas. The curator further works as a visiting lecturer, critic, and speaker at a number of universities and institutions, as well as an editor and writer for multiple publications and catalogues. She holds degrees from University College London and University of Oxford.

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Berlin-born curator Jenny Schlenzka, who specialises in contemporary art, has been Director of the Gropius Bau since September 2023. Prior to that, she spent more than 20 years in New York City, where she ran Performance Space New York from 2017. During her time there, she worked with Donna Haraway, Juliana Huxtable, Mette Ingvartsen, Ligia Lewis, Renata Lucas, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Sarah Michelson, Precious Okoyomon, Sondra Perry and Underground Resistance, among others, integrating artists into all facets of the institution.

Before heading Performance Space, she developed new exhibition formats for performance at MoMA PS1 in Queens, including the acclaimed Sunday Sessions, a weekly, free-of-charge live programme that brought together artists such as Cyprien Gaillard, Kim Gordon, Cao Fei, Anne Imhof, Joan Jonas, Ragnar Kjartansson, Jutta Koether, Mårten Spångberg, M.I.A., Pope.L, Pussy Riot and Wu-Tang Clan. Prior to that, she served as the first ever curator for performance at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), where she helped building the Department of Media and Performance Art.

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Defne Ayas is a curator committed to forging alliances with art and artists, focusing on reimagining cultural platforms and formats. Her work explores how artists can create future vectors for reality, politics, and representation—be they aesthetic, geographic, political, communal, or spiritual. Ayas has served in key roles at cultural institutions worldwide, including Melly (fka Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art) (2012-2017). Currently working between Berlin and New York, she is a Curator at Large at Performa, a founding curator since 2005. Recent projects like Protest and Performance: A Way of Life and Sonic Tonic Assembly (both in 2023) highlight her commitment to reflecting the Zeitgeist and collective energy of collaborators. Until June 2021, she was Artistic Director of the 2021 Gwangju Biennale with Natasha Ginwala.

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Charlotte Klonk studied art history at the Universities of Hamburg and Cambridge. After completing her dissertation, she was a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church College, Oxford University, and a lecturer at the University of Warwick. Since 2011, she has been professor of art history at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin.

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Helena Uambembe, born in 1994 in Pomfret, South Africa, is an artist of Angolan descent whose work is heavily influenced by her heritage and experiences. Her parents fled the civil war in Angola and her father was a soldier in the 32 Battalion of the South African Defence Force. Uambembe's artistic practice explores themes of the 32 Military Battalion and her Angolan heritage. She obtained her Btech in 2018 from Tshwane University of Technology in South Africa. Uambembe won the David Koloane Award and completed a two-month residency at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg. She has exhibited at Art Basel Statement where she was awarded the Baloise Art Prize in 2022. She had her first institutional solo show at Museum MMK  für Moderne Kunst MMK Frankfurt in 2023. She is also one of the recipients of the 2025 Ars Viva Art Prize. With a unique artistic voice rooted in her personal experience and heritage, Helena Uambembe continues to explore and push the boundaries of contemporary art.

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Partners 

This Project is realized in cooperation with the following partners:

KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa

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