Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa have been shortlisted for this year’s Turner Prize.
Announced on the 250th anniversary of English artist JMW Turner’s birth, the four artists will now prepare for an exhibition of their work later this year before a winner is chosen.
Established in 1984, the Turner Prize is the UK’s most prestigious art prize. Named after the Romantic landscape painter, for the last 41 years, the Turner Prize has celebrated many of the UK’s most important contemporary artists.
Previous winners include Damien Hirst, Steve McQueen, and Grayson Perry.
Last year’s winner was Jasleen Kaur for ‘Alter Altar’, which personified everyday objects through sound installations, exploring her cultural heritage via sculptures formed out of family photos, an Axminster carpet, a vintage Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic hand bells.
This year’s shortlisted artists come from a range of different practices, from large-scale paintings depicting life in Baghdad to cellophane wrapped sculptures.
The 2025 shortlist was announced at a ceremony at the Tate Britain in London. An exhibition of their work will be held at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford from 27 September 2025 to 22 February 2026 as part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations. Finally, the winner will be announced in a ceremony on 9 December 2025, also in Bradford.
Each shortlisted artist will be awarded £10,000 (€11,700) with the winner awarded a prize of £25,000 (€29,200).
“It’s an honour to announce this fantastic Turner Prize shortlist – congratulations to all the nominees. The shortlist reflects the breadth of artistic practice today, from painting and sculpture to photography and installation, and each of the artists offers a unique way of viewing the world through personal experience and expression,” said Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain and Chair of the Turner Prize Jury.
“On JMW Turner’s 250th birthday, I’m delighted to see his spirit of innovation is still alive and well in contemporary British art today, and I look forward to an unmissable exhibition of their work in Bradford this autumn.”
Here’s a breakdown of the four shortlisted artists:
Nnena Kalu
Kalu is nominated for her presentation as part of ‘Conversations’ at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and ‘Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10’ at Manifesta 15, Barcelona. The Glaswegian artist creates fascinating sculptural installations from paper and textiles which are then bound and wrapped in cellophane to create cocoon-like shapes.
Through repetition of gestures or motions, also seen in her vortex drawings, Kalu’s practice brings together a “unique command of material, colour and gesture and her highly attuned responses to architectural space.”
Rene Matić
Matić is nominated for their solo exhibition ‘AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH’ at CCA Berlin. Born in 1997, they are the youngest of the shortlisted artists. Their work explores post-blackness, glitch feminism and subculture theory.
Their photography of personal moments, capturing fleeting moments of quotidian joy bring together individuality and a greater political context. “The jury were struck by the artist’s ability to express concerns around belonging and identity, conveying broader experiences of a young generation and their community through an intimate and compelling body of work.”
Mohammed Sami
Sami is nominated for his solo exhibition ‘After the Storm’ at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire. Born in Baghdad in 1984, Sami graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts, Baghdad in 2005 before moving to the UK.
His large-scale paintings of dreamlike scenes depict his memories and explore the loss of his life during the Iraq War and his time as a refugee in Sweden. “Devoid of people, he paints empty landscapes, interiors and items of furniture as metaphors for absent bodies and their memories. The jury praised the artist’s powerful representation of war and exile, exhibited against the backdrop of Blenheim Palace.”
Zadie Xa
Xa is nominated for her presentation ‘Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything with Benito Mayor Vallejo’ at Sharjah Biennial 16. The Korean-Canadian artist is multidisciplinary in her practice, bringing in sculpture, painting, light, sound, video, and performance.
For her nominated presentation, Xa created an installation that brought together ethereal paintings, bojagi patchwork and an interactive sculpture of over 650 brass wind chimes inspired by Korean shamanic ritual bells to explore the spiritual realm of folklore. “The jury felt that this cohesive work was a sophisticated development of Xa’s reflective and enchanting practice.”
