Slovenian artist Tanja Pak has won the Grand Prize for her work Reverie at the 2024 Toyama International Glass Exhibition in Japan. Her work will be exhibited in the Toyama Glass Art Museum from 13 July to 14 October and will become part of the permanent collection.

The exhibition is a triennial event, launched in 2018. It showcases the newest achievements of modern glass art from all around the world and promotes its development.

Pak's work was selected for the top award among 785 works by 580 artists from 50 countries. The exhibition hands out one Grand Prize, one golden award, two silver awards and five awards of the jury. Around 50 works will be featured at the exhibition.

Pak said she was honoured to have won the Grand Prize, worth YEN 3,000,000 or around €17,600.

A detail of Reverie, a work that won Tanja Pak the Grand Prize at the 2024 Toyama International Glass Exhibition. Photo: Tone Stojko

"For the jury to notice and highlight my work is not just a recognition but an exceptional affirmation," Pak was quoted as saying in a press release from the PR platform Kreativna Baza.

"The award comes at a perfect moment to give me the motivation for the future search for the intangible, the sensuous," the artist added.

The basis for her artwork was an installation called Reveries/To There she created for the 2022 Ljubljana Festival.

Reveries wonders about the fragility of life, the ethereal presence and the fleeting nearly immaterial existence. It poses the challenge on how to transfer the idea of fragility into matter where it almost disappears, leaving behind only a thought, a feeling.

Pak creates sculptures, spatial art installations and useful glass objects. In her work she explores the feelings of loneliness and being alone, emphasising the search for closeness and the fragile nature of relationships.