The 2026 Mapleton-Bree Prize for Work in the Creative Arts

The Mapleton-Bree Prize is awarded annually for an original piece of work in any of the creative arts. As in previous years, the judging panel were enthused and impressed by the overall quality and quantity of entries, reflecting ‘how much wonderful creative work is going on in college’. With such an array of talent on display, the judges decided to split the prize equally between Joyce (Ruozhou) Wei (Fine Art, 2023) and Dara Mohd (Philosophy and Theology, 2024).

Wei’s entry, Eating My Ancestor, was an edible canvas on which was embedded a digitally-processed image of the artist’s grandfather. The canvas was cut into pieces and then eaten, with the work displayed along with a tasting tray. The judges commended Wei’s ‘technically inventive use of [the] medium to generate a powerfully moving visual and phenomenological embodiment of mourning. Its reflection on grief at a distance and its invitation to the beholder to participate in that process mark it out as both visually and conceptually original’.

Mohd’s entry, Eastern Time, is a short piece of literary fiction set in Syria on the first day of the Arab Spring. The judges described it as ‘a richly evocative text that employs lyrically visual imagery and a layering of time with real mastery. The text conveys a vivid sense of the café setting and makes compelling use of strikingly tactile descriptions to transform what might in the opening paragraphs seem a familiar scenario into a compelling and original meditation on traumatic memory’. (Read Eastern Time here.)

The judges also highly commended musical compositions by Elliot Wigham (Music, 2024) and Nicole Palka (Music, 2024).