CHANEL Next Prize award designed by Royal College of Art Sculpture student

Students from the RCA’s Sculpture MA programme were invited to design an award honouring the 2024 CHANEL Next Prize winners. This biennial prize is awarded to international contemporary artists redefining their disciplines. The selection was made by a jury including Christian de Kjaerulf-Praksti (CHANEL) and Simon Castets (Arles Foundation), alongside representatives from CHANEL and the Royal College of Art.

The commission was overseen by Sarah Staton, tutor on the Sculpture MA programme at the Royal College of Art. The jury also recognised strong proposals by Charlotte Miles and Adriana Jaroslavsky, who were named as runners-up.

“We were delighted that CHANEL and the RCA’s Sculpture MA programme could work on this project, which has been running since 2023. Following a brief set by the client, our MA sculpture students were invited to create 3D analogue submissions in the form of maquettes of the award. They produced a wonderfully imaginative array of shapes, textures and surfaces formed from a wide range of materials.”

For the 2024 edition, Ana María Chamucero's proposal, titled Inflection Point, was selected for its clarity of vision, formal strength, and ability to embody the spirit of the prize in sculptural form.

The completed sculptures, cast in bronze, were presented at a celebratory dinner hosted by CHANEL in October 2025, following a two-day educational programme at the RCA’s Battersea campus, delivered by experienced academics from the RCA’s School of Arts and Humanities.

An inflection point marks the moment at which a curve changes direction: a turning point, a decisive shift, a redirection toward new possibility. Chamucero’s original maquette was conceived as an assemblage of knee pads: an object that shields the body from potential impact, a curved structure that anticipates a fall.

“I thought of the knee pads as an object able to offer confidence and reassurance when taking a risk. They prepare the body for an unforeseen landing,” she explains. “I believe creating is an act of bravery, a leap into the unknown. I wanted this assemblage to become an amulet, a companion object that would serve as a reminder to the awardees to continue stepping forward in their creative practices without fear.”

The work remains rigorously aligned with the ethos of the CHANEL Next Prize, honouring innovation, courage and transformation. At the same time, it remains unmistakably rooted in Chamucero’s own sculptural inquiry. Her practice reflects a sensibility of inventiveness embedded in Colombian everyday practices, where objects are often extended beyond their intended function to respond to immediate needs.

Drawing on her training as a former dancer, her practice often unfolds through a process of rehearsal between her body and the materials she encounters. “In the studio, an exchange of movement takes place between my body and the objects, a dance where they reveal their own behaviour,” Chamucero notes. “For the award maquette, I assembled the knee pads in the way that felt natural to them, the way they seemed to ask to be assembled.”

Once selected, Chamucero’s sculpture was cast in bronze in collaboration with Arch Bronze Foundry. The artist worked closely with the foundry’s specialists to ensure the final pieces preserved the material character of the initial assemblage. Reflecting her interest in the knowledge and memory carried by the objects she recovers, the original knee pads used in her maquette retain the marks of use and their visible stitching, details that acquire an unexpected permanence through the bronze casting process.

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Helen Clarke was the previous Sculpture MA student that created a winning artwork for this project called Matrix in 2023.

Born in Colombia and currently based between London and Bogotá, Ana María Chamucero received her BA from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá and her MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art in London.

Chamucero was recently selected by the Royal Society of Sculptors as one of the 2026 Gilbert Bayes Award winners and shortlisted for the Mark Tanner Sculpture Award. Her work has been presented in exhibitions including Artecámara 2021 (the emerging artists’ section of ARTBO, Bogotá’s International Art Fair); the virtual event Bienal Online: Mês da Videoarte 2021 as part of the Curitiba Biennial in Brazil; and the YICCA International Contest of Contemporary Art (Zagreb, Croatia, 2019), where she received first place. In 2024 she was among the nominees for the Premio Arte Joven (Young Art Prize Colombia), having previously been shortlisted in 2020.