Artist Rosa Klerkx will present 216 at Perrotin London this September, a new exhibition bringing together film, performance, photography and sound — all developed through repeated visits to a town she had never previously encountered.
Klerkx is the winner of the 2025 Claridge’s Royal Academy Schools Art Prize, which awards £30,000 alongside a solo exhibition in London. She was selected during the 2025 Royal Academy Schools Show by a judging panel comprising Chantal Joffe RA, Roger Hiorns RA and Claudette Johnson RA.
Rather than choosing the location for 216 because of a personal or biographical connection, Klerkx allowed a numerical system to determine where she would go, drawing on references including Plato’s The Republic. Once there, she repeatedly returned to the same streets, buildings and viewpoints, gradually constructing a body of work through observation, repetition and time.
At the centre of the exhibition is a new three-channel film installation shot inside a disused building in the town. Local residents were invited to perform a choreographic score individually, with the same instructions producing subtle differences in gesture, pace and attention from one person to the next.
That interplay between structure and variation continues through a new composition for euphonium written by Klerkx. Beginning with an existing structure, the music is gradually transformed through repetition, omission and rearrangement, running independently alongside the other elements of the exhibition.
Then there are the 216 hours themselves.
A series of photographic blueprints has been created from 35mm photographs taken during the 216 hours Klerkx spent in the town. Rather than conventionally printing the images, she exposed light-sensitive paper directly to sunlight outside her studio, adjusting each exposure according to changing weather conditions. The resulting works record both what she observed and the physical circumstances through which the images were made.
Born in Amsterdam in 1996, Klerkx works across video, performance, photography and sound, using notation systems and instructive methods to create slow, repetitive choreographies concerned with emptiness, disconnection, alienation and belonging. She graduated from the Royal Academy Schools in 2025, where her work was acquired for the Royal Academy Collection.
Her recent exhibitions include the NCA Triennale in Lahore and Minor Attractions in London, both in 2025, alongside presentations at Chequers and South Parade in London, Generator Projects in Dundee and the Pipe Factory in Glasgow.
The Claridge’s Royal Academy Schools Art Prize is now in its third year and was established to support emerging artists at a pivotal point in their careers. Its first recipient, Daria Blum, has subsequently exhibited at Tate Modern.
For Klerkx, the prize provides an opportunity to take an experiment built around an arbitrary destination and 216 hours of accumulated experience and turn it into something considerably more structured: a place reconstructed through bodies, images, sound and time.
Rosa Klerkx: 216, 1st–26th September 2026
Perrotin London, Claridge’s
About the artist
Rosa Klerkx (b.1996, Amsterdam, the Netherlands) is an artist working across video, performance, photography and sound. She creates layered compositions and installations that explore themes of emptiness, disconnection, alienation and belonging.
Often set in vast landscapes or overlooked interiors, her work uses instructive methods and personal notation systems to develop loose, slow, and repetitive choreographies. Through this approach, she reflects on how we move through the world – and how to search, quietly, for connection within it. Klerkx recently graduated from the RA Schools, where her work was acquired by the RA Collection. She received the Claridge’s Royal Academy Schools Art Prize and the SPACE Studio Award 2025. Her work has recently been exhibited at the NCA Triennale in Lahore, Pakistan and at Minor Attractions, London (2025). She was also included in a duo show with Garth Evans at Chequers, London, alongside group exhibitions at South Parade, London, Generator Projects, Dundee and the Pipe Factory, Glasgow.
