Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki wins 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize

The winner of the 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize has been named as Japanese ceramicist Eriko Inazaki. Her winning work, a ceramic piece titled Metanoia, 2019, is a captivating orb covered in fine, plant and flower-like extrusions, each intricately made by pinching the clay by hand. This year's honourable mentions went to Dominique Zinkpè from Benin for his wall sculpture The Watchers, and Moe Watanabe, a Japanese artist whose work Transfer Surface uses salvaged walnut bark to construct its naturalistic box form. 

Speaking ahead of the prize ceremony, which was held at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, Loewe's creative director Jonathan Anderson said, 'Each year gets better and better, hence why it also gets harder and harder. It's a global submission [and] there's no political things or [any constraint] in terms of where people apply from, which is the point. This is what's unique about the prize. The level is up and we’ve got many amazing pieces competing against each other.’

This year marks the sixth edition of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize, launched in 2016. Initiated because of Anderson’s deep interest in craft techniques and as a reflection of the fashion brand’s own craft heritage, the prize has played a key role in shaping how craft is perceived in an age when the distinctions between art, design and fashion continue to be blurred. 

‘I was looking at friends who worked in craft and saw them [as] just as important as sculptors or contemporary artists,’ he recalled. ‘The packaging of it was wrong in some cases. One of the biggest things was [that] there wasn’t enough exposure. What Loewe and the foundation does is provide huge amounts of exposure to unknown artists. No matter whether you win or not, being shortlisted helps to boost their profile, and at the same time, it helps people to understand that craft is not just one thing.’

Inazaki’s winning work describes a period of deep personal anguish, something that is palpable through the tiny, biological structures layered on the ceramic body’s surface, which are vitrified and shrunken down further in the kiln. Anderson said, ‘What I love about the work is you have no idea what it’s made out of. It has an incredible sense of anxiety in it, which I quite like. At the same time, there is a depth of field that is very unusual in ceramics. You get this idea that it has so many layers that you go into, that you can get lost in it. When you look at it in a video, it looks completely different [than] in the flesh. There is something about this fragility that is remarkable.’

With a cash prize of €50,000, winning the title certainly has a significant impact on the artist – something to which last year’s winner, Dahye Jeong, who was also a member of this year’s jury, can attest. She said, ‘Because the craft tradition that I work in is not well known, even in Korea, I used to struggle a lot with doubting myself before winning. Now I have more confidence in what I’m pursuing. The Loewe Foundation always discovers new artists and there are things here in this year’s group that I also discovered. I work on challenging the medium’s limitations, and those were the criteria when looking for this year’s winner. When I [first] saw an image of Eriko’s work, I initially thought it was a textile piece. When I saw it [in the flesh], I felt she had a deep knowledge and understanding of the medium and was also pioneering a new path in this field.’

The 2023 Loewe Foundation Craft Prize will be on view at the Noguchi Museum, New York until 18 June 2023. craftprize.loewe.com; loewe.com