Jakob Fioole: The Sally Bishop Prize

My paintings don’t tell a definitive story; they are attempts to visualize an experience.

—Jakob Fioole 

Jakob Fioole blends figuration and abstraction to create immersive scenes. The artist paints ambiguous narratives that depict a world that is at once familiar and foreign. Identifiable objects and obscured human forms are set in unexpected scenarios that seem to depict a world that, while imaginary, is not wholly unlike our own—perhaps a vision of an alternative reality or an interpretation of current or historic events. Of his work, the artist has said, “While processing everything I encounter in this world and society, I study the things that move me most, looking to find alternative perspectives and combine them in a different context to create a new meaningful moment set in an immersive environment that the observer is a visitor of.” 

Fioole is the winner of the Sally Bishop Prize, the top honor at the 2023 ArtsWorcester Biennial. In addition to a cash prize, the winner of this award receives a solo exhibition at the Worcester Art Museum. Since 2017, this partnership between the Worcester Art Museum and ArtsWorcester has provided the winning artist with an important museum credential, while placing their work in conversation with world-renowned artists in the Museum’s collection. Fioole was born in the Netherlands and currently lives and works in Berlin, MA.