The Theodora Niemeijer Prize is an award dedicated to supporting female artists in the Netherlands, and one of the largest of its kind in Europe.

The prestigious recognition comes less than two years after Herregraven was honoured as the Evens Arts Prize laureate in 2023.

Herregraven’s artistic practice navigates the complexities of global networks and power structures, visualizing the unseen and the intangible. The Evens Foundation’s jury particularly highlighted her use of highly exploitative technology, such as AI, to unsettle and undo established capitalist models, and her in-depth research on the concept of catastrophe and the financialization of human lives as liability and risk. The Theodora Niemeijer Prize further cements her reputation as a pioneering voice in contemporary art.

Established in 2012, the Theodora Niemeijer Prize, worth €100,000, aims to increase the representation and appreciation of female artists at a time when works by female artists are still underrepresented in exhibitions and museum collections and the annual income of female visual artists is 20 percent lower than that of their male colleagues (source: Boekmanstichting via Stichting Niemeijer Fonds).

A quarter of the prize is set aside to enable the acquisition of the winners work by a Dutch museum—in this case the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

“Femke Herregraven’s work is very unique. It is layered, engaged, sculptural, hybrid and unlike anything we know,” said Rein Wolfs, director of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and jury member for the Theodora Niemeijer Prize.

“As a researcher-artist or artist-researcher, she encodes her critical findings in a very curious way. At Stedelijk, we are particularly pleased that she has won this important award and that we can use it, together with Femke Herregraven and the Niemeijer Fund, to make an important statement about the need for a stronger representation of female makers in museums.”