Dan and Lia Perjovschi honored with The Princess Margriet Award

The ECF Princess Margriet Award will be awarded to the Israeli-American conductor Yoel Gamzou and Romanian visual artists Dan and Lia Perjovschi on 19 March 2013 in the presence of HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands. The Princess Margriet Award is an annual award given to European artists, intellectuals and activists whose work shows the power of culture in constructing a democratic and inclusive Europe. The award acts as a platform for ECF’s support of those whose creative work can truly make a difference to Europe’s varied societies.

Lia and Dan Perjovschi are visual artists and community builders in the Romanian and international art scenes. The artist couple has been selected by the Jury for the active role that their art has played in building a cultural community in Romania as well as its European relevance. Collaboratively, the Perjovschi couple have turned their studio into an accessible, bottom-up environment for cultural action and education, a place to share knowledge and deepen the public’s historical and cultural awareness of art’s role in society.

Previous laureates have included cultural theorist Stuart Hall, choreographers Jérôme Bel & Pichet Klunchun, dramaturg and activist Borka Pavidevid , theatre maker Stefan Kaegi, artists Kutluğ Ataman and Šejla Kamerid, filmmaker John Akomfrah and curator Charles Esche.

The Princess Margriet Award was initiated in 2008 by the European Cultural Foundation named after the foundation’s former President Princess Margriet who has shown enormous dedication to culture as a means of understanding and valuing Europe’s diversity. It was established in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Oana Vasiliu