Alongside the exhibition of the award winners the 2026 Jindřich Chalupecký Award, we are presenting the project His Life and Work Sophie Jung, an international guest at the 37th annual Jindřich Chalupecký Award.  

Sophie Jung (*1982) studied at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam and at Goldsmiths in London. Her work explores representation and its pitfalls, both culturally—as a system of masked and mutable signs—and personally—as a way of observing and documenting life. She regularly grapples with form and affect, pragmatism and romanticism.

She is currently working on her first monograph with Mousse Publishing; upcoming projects include a commissioned performance at the Westfälischer Kunstverein in 2027, a solo exhibition at the Camden Art Center and the Kunsthalle Bern in 2027, and a solo exhibition at MUDAM in Luxembourg in 2028. In 2016 and 2019, she received the Swiss Art Awards, and in 2018, she was awarded the Manor Kunstpreis. From 2017 to 2019, she served on the jury for the Swiss Prize for Performing Arts. She is an external mentor at the Institute for Art, Gender, and Nature at HGK Basel, holds a Lehrauftrag for performance art at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe, and is a new member of the board of directors of Kunsthalle Basel. From 2022 to 2023, she was an artist-in-residence at the Istituto Svizzero Roma.

Her recent exhibitions include They Might Stay The Night at Casino Luxembourg; Unsetting at the Istituto Svizzero in Milan; Taxpayer’s Money for the Frieze LIVE fair; Dramatis Personae at JOAN in Los Angeles; The Bigger Sleep at Kunstmuseum Basel; Come Fresh Hell or Fresh High Water at Blain Southern in London; Producing My Credentials at Kunstraum London; and Paramount VS Tantamount at Kunsthalle Basel.