Meet the Turner Prize 2025 shortlisted artists

Zadie Xa

(Image credit: Photo: Charles Duprat. Courtesy Thaddaeus Ropac gallery)

published 23 April 2025

The four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2025 – Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa – work across an eclectic spectrum of materials and mediums. This year, themes from the spiritual to the political and personal are considered, through painting, sculpture, photography and installation.

An exhibition of the shortlisted artists’ work will be held at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, from 27 September 2025 to 22 February 2026, as part of Bradford 2025 City of Culture. The jury, headed by Alex Farquharson, director, Tate Britain, and comprising Andrew Bonacina, independent curator; Sam Lackey, director, Liverpool Biennial; Priyesh Mistry, associate curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery; and Habda Rashid, senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Fitzwilliam Museum, will announce the winner on 9 December 2025.

Nnena Kalu

Nnena Kalu’s installations are sculpturally sublime, encompassing tightly packed, colourful textiles and paper. By binding, layering and wrapping them in cellophane and tape, they become cocoon-like when hung, a process she repeats in a practice integral to her philosophy. The abstract, meandering patterns make a vibrant foil to her considerations of the space her works command.

Kalu is nominated for her work, part of the exhibitions ‘Conversations’, at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, and ‘Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10’ at Manifesta 15, Barcelona.

Rene Matić

Artist and writer Matić intertwines personal references throughout works that consider broader themes of identity and belonging. Considering their family’s heritage, and their own, they include photographs of family and friends, showcased in frames that are stacked, to express moments of tenderness amidst turmoil. Matić also works with sound and installation to create an immersive environment that represents their experience in the community. Matić's exhibition, Idols Lovers Mothers Friends, is currently on show at Arcadia Missa, London, until 3 June.

Matić is nominated for their solo exhibition, ‘AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH’, at CCA Berlin.

Mohammed Sami

Mohammed Sami is concerned with memory and loss, subjects he explores in evocative, large-scale paintings. Sami’s ambiguous works eschew the presence of people to focus instead on landscapes and environments, their emptiness reiterating the absence of people and the dearth of memory. In these ambiguous situations, the human presence is clearly near. Through layers of patterns and colours, Sami draws on his life in Baghdad during the Iraq War, and, later, his time as a refugee in Sweden.

Sami is nominated for his solo exhibition ‘After the Storm’ at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.

Zadie Xa

Xa works across mural, textile, sound and painting to create spiritual works that put the sea as the focus, blending cultures and references to create ethereal other worlds. Tradition, folklore and stories combine in her installation at 2025's Sharjah Biennial, which married bojagi patchwork and painting with a sculpture made of over 650 brass wind chimes inspired by Korean shamanic ritual bells.

Xa is nominated for ‘Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything’, with Benito Mayor Vallejo, at Sharjah Biennial 16.

bradford2025.co.uk

TOPICS

Hannah Silver is the Art, Culture, Watches & Jewellery Editor of Wallpaper*. Since joining in 2019, she has overseen offbeat design trends and in-depth profiles, and written extensively across the worlds of culture and luxury. She enjoys meeting artists and designers, viewing exhibitions and conducting interviews on her frequent travels.