HGB artist Len Bay is one of the winners of this year’s MONOM Art Prize. The prize honours art college students who are making the transition from their studies to independent artistic practice. Congratulations!
Len Bay graduated from the HGB in 2025 under Prof. Joachim Blank and was honoured for his sculptural series ‘toy boy’. The work explores the culture of car tuning as a social space in which notions of masculinity, performance and identity are negotiated. Using industrial materials, he creates sculptures that straddle the boundaries between machine, body and desire. Through iridescent metallic surfaces and the playful sexualisation of car parts, Len Bay challenges conventional notions of masculinity and offers a queer perspective on supposedly unambiguous visions of strength and dominance.
The MONOM Foundation for Change encourages a critical engagement with society in order to promote the emancipatory idea of equality for all, and is awarding the art prize of the same name for the second time this year. “Our foundation established this prize to encourage young artists to question the social responsibility of the visual arts and the conditions under which they are produced,” says Katharina Hamann, Executive Director of the MONOM Foundation. This year, a four-member expert jury selected the three prize-winners from over 100 applications. The MONOM Art Prize is accompanied by prize money and further training to help the winners launch their careers as independent artists.