Diane Hillebrand erhält Giovanni Francesco Marchini-Preis

Diane Hillebrand receives the Giovanni Francesco Marchini Prize from the Bruchsal Schloss Lions Club. For the second time, the Lions Club Bruchsal Schloss is donating a graduate scholarship for the Karlsruhe State University of Art and Design.

For the second time, the Lions Club Bruchsal Schloss is donating the Giovanni Francesco Marchini Prize, which is awarded to graduates of the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG) every two years. The prize consists of a 12-month work scholarship and a solo exhibition at the art association "Das Damianstor" Bruchsal. It is linked to an art project with pupils from the Pestalozzi School in Bruchsal, which the scholarship holder develops herself and realises with the children and young people. The prize is named after the baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Marchini, who created the frescoes in the Hofkirche, which were destroyed in the Second World War, as well as the façade painting on the garden side of Bruchsal Castle.

The jury, consisting of representatives of HfG Karlsruhe, Lions Club Bruchsal Schloss, Kunstverein Bruchsal and a representative of the Pestalozzi School Bruchsal, awarded the €4,000 Giovanni Francesco Marchini Prize 2020 to scenographer Diane Hillebrand.

Diane Hillenbrand, born 1993 in Halle (Saale), studied Exhibition Design and Scenography, Curatorial Practice & Dramaturgical Theory at the HfG Karlsruhe from 2017 to 2020. From 2013-2017 she studied Visual Communication at the Kunsthochschule Kassel. As a scenographer, Diane Hillebrand is interested in the ergonomic conditions as well as tactile, muscular and instinctive needs of visitors in exhibitions. An exploratory, scenographic examination of the relationships between the bodies that make up an exhibition - exhibits, visitors' bodies, buildings, furniture - is at the centre of her work. For the exhibition project at Kunstverein Bruchsal, which has been postponed to summer 2021 due to the coronavirus, Diane Hillebrand is now planning an exploration of the historical furniture in Bruchsal Castle.

"From the emergence of the museum in the 18th century to the present day, museum furniture has shaped viewers' engagement with both artworks and each other," write Diana Fuss and Joel Sanders in "An Aesthetic Headache: Notes from the Museum Bench". "This seemingly inconspicuous accessory registers changing cultural attitudes to subject and object, private and public, mind and body, art and life. For Diane Hillebrand, devoting herself to exhibition furniture means recognising the material basis of the aesthetic gaze: its localisation in a real body with real needs and real limitations."

Based on the furniture of the castle in Bruchsal, which is part of the work of the cabinetmaker Ferdinand Hundt, Diane Hillebrand will create a site-specific counter-design to today's archetype of exhibition furniture, which is strongly characterised by modernist architecture and the furnishing of salesrooms.