We Have a Winner: Mees de Rozario | Ron Mandos Young Blood Award 2025

29.07.25

We Have a Winner: Mees de Rozario | Ron Mandos Young Blood Award 2025

We’re happy and proud to announce the winner of the RM Young Blood Award: Mees de Rozario! The award was presented this evening by Barbara Bos, Head of Exhibitions at Museum Voorlinden, during the festive opening of Best of Graduates 2025. As part of the award, Mees de Rozario will present a performance of his ongoing Rozario’s Rave Organs series at Museum Voorlinden. He will also receive a commission for a new artwork for the museum, made possible by the Ron Mandos Young Blood Foundation.

Mees de Rozario, a 2025 graduate of ArtEZ University of the Arts Arnhem, creates sculptural sound works and video that combine storytelling, performance, protest, and sound. His practice is driven by curiosity and play, constructing DIY machines and sound systems that are mobile, loud, and participatory.

As Barbara Bos noted during the award ceremony, “Mees de Rozario brilliantly brings together different disciplines and media. With his Rave Organs he seamlessly blends critique, storytelling with humour. He disguises his sharp and critical view – on society, public space and our obsession with efficiency – in a playful protest. Through his work, he reactivates the past, questions the present and invites us to imagine a shared future.”

In Rozario’s Rave Organs, Mees reimagines the traditional Dutch street organ through the lens of rave and soundsystem culture. While one is seen as cultural heritage and the other as disruptive noise, his hybrid sound machines explore who gets to be heard and how sound claims space.

His works challenge norms while creating joy and disruption in equal measure. As Mees puts it:

“The only good system is a soundsystem.”

Thank you to everyone who joined us for this special celebration. If you missed it, the exhibition is now open to the public and features the work of all 27 participating artists from Dutch art academies. Visit us and discover this next generation of talent! Below, learn more about Mees de Rozario’s work.