The Turner Prize 2025 is produced by Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and delivered in partnership with Tate, Bradford District Museums & Galleries and Yorkshire Contemporary.

The Turner Prize 2025 is curated by Jill Iredale (Curator, Bradford District Museums & Galleries), Michael Richmond (Curator, Yorkshire Contemporary) and Sophie Bullen (Assistant Curator, Yorkshire Contemporary).
With thanks to Arcadia Missa, Charlotte Hollinshead and the team at ActionSpace, Modern Art and Thaddaeus Ropac.

The Turner Prize 2025 is supported by The John Browne Char table Trust and The Uggla Family Foundation.

Rene Matić uses photography along with sculpture, textiles, sound, moving image and writing to reflect on identity, community and love.

Their work often captures scenes and snippets from everyday life, subcultures and their own personal background to ask questions about race, gender, class and nationality.

Matić was born in Peterborough in 1997. They live and work in London.

They are nominated for their solo exhibition As Opposed to the Truth at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Berlin.

The jury was impressed 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.

The artist would like to thank:

Arcadia Missa Gallery, Chapter NYC, CCA Berlin, Michael and Jill, Yorkshire Contemporary, Tate, Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, everyone included in the images and my wonderful friends and family.

Mohammed Sami creates paintings related to memory and conflict. Devoid of people, his works take the form of landscapes and still lifes. These scenes might appear serene or without a narrative, but closer viewing reveals clues that hint toward more complex meanings.

Interested in personal and collective memory, his paintings counter the often-sensationalised portrayal of events such as warfare. In doing so, his works offer space for nuanced and reflective stories to be told.

Sami was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1984. He lives and works in London.

He is nominated for his solo exhibition After the Storm: Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire.

The jury praised the artist’s powerful representation of war and exile, exhibited against the backdrop of Blenheim Palace.

Nnena Kalu creates large-scale abstract drawings and hanging sculptures. Her vividly coloured works are carefully created from repeated lines and wrappings of different materials, making nest or cocoon-like forms. While drawings are made in her studio, sculptures are often finalised on site, with Kalu adapting them to specific spaces.

Kalu was born in Glasgow in 1966. She lives in London and is an Autistic, learning disabled artist with limited verbal communication. Kalu’s practice is supported and managed by visual arts organisation ActionSpace, which she has been a member of since 1999.

Kalu is nominated for the inclusion of Drawing 21 in the group exhibition Conversations at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool and her works Hanging Sculpture 1-10. Barcelona at Manifesta 15.

The jury commended her unique command of material, colour and gesture, and her highly attuned responses to architectural space.

The artist would like to thank:

Charlotte Hollinshead. The wonderful ActionSpace team past and present. Sheryll Catto, Barbara Van Heel, Siobhan Stewart and Dan Lamont. Nnena’s studio assistants Shelley Davies, Anna King, Isabel Hendley and Isabel Jones. ActionSpace artists Pardip Kapil, Linda Bell, Chandrakant Patel, Robin Smith, Claudia Williams, Lasmin Salmon, Kwaga Sillingi. Mrs Kalu, Joan Allen St.Hill, Anna Plaston and the support team at Cavendish Road.

Agnes Ofori-Atta and the support team at CM Care. Rozsa Farkas and the Arcadia Missa team. Joe Scotland and the Studio Voltaire team. Lisa Slominski, Jes Fernie, Kristina Ketola Bore, Hanne Mugaas, Jennifer Lauren, Pierre Muylle, Roksanda and Ella Simmonds. The Manifesta 15 team, The Walker Art Gallery. Luke Ottridge and Will Olmi at One Trust. The Wandsworth Council Arts team.

Zadie Xa creates installations using painting, sound, textiles and sculpture. These immersive environments are conjured from a wide range of sources and research interests, including ancestry, Korean mythology and folklore, as well as natural and supernatural worlds.

Xa was born in Vancouver, Canada in 1983. She lives and works in London.

She is nominated for her solo presentation Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything at Sharjah Biennial 16, United Arab Emirates.

The jury felt that this work was a sophisticated development of Xa’s reflective and enchanting practice.

The artist would like to thank:

Benito Mayor Vallejo
Imsook Cha
Fizzy and Bonne
Shengli Lin Studio
Jan Poul Framing
Tom Slater of Call and Response Studios
Amal Khalaf
Aia Azad
Peace Pyunghwa Lee
Thaddaeus Ropac Gallery
The Sharjah Art Foundation

Quieter Viewings will take place at 3-4pm every first Wednesday of the month (1 October, 5 November, December, 7 January and February). Tickets for these sessions are very limited, allowing visitors to explore the exhibition in a quieter setting at their own pace.

The Family Guide is a self-led guide designed to help families to interact with the exhibition. The Playful Space in the Learning Room will be presenting free family activities every weekend and during the school holidays.

Where sensitive or challenging themes are addressed, content advice can be found at the gallery.

The exhibition text, artist films and many resources are available online, along with the full programme of events. For more information, visit bradford2025.co.uk/turnerprize.

Rene Matić works primarily with photography as well as sculpture, textiles, sound and other media. Their artwork questions identity, society and how we find a sense of belonging.

Created amid a backdrop of right-wing populism, violence and political hypocrisy, Matić’s exhibition As Opposed to the Truth explores how, despite this, people can ‘hold on to one another, care for each other, and learn to live with vulnerability,’ as they explain.

Matić has a longstanding interest in flags and the meanings we place in them, whether used by nation states or individuals at protests. In the centre of the room hangs a white flag containing the words ‘no place’ and ‘for violence’. It quotes a chorus of American political leaders who, in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July 2024, proclaimed that there is no place for violence in democracy. Matić points to the contradictions between political words and actions at a time of increasing global conflict.

In contrast, other works explore notions of care, emotion and the reality of human experience. Restoration is a growing collection of antique Black dolls, many of which were left broken or abandoned and have been salvaged by the artist. Drawing from their own history, including a beige wall colour from their family home, the work speaks to caring for those who may have been left behind.

Feelings Wheel, a photo series, and 365, a sound installation, bring together overlapping imagery and sounds referencing protest, parties and relationships. Together, they reflect the fractured realities of contemporary life.

Feelings Wheel
2022-25

40 photographs, inkjet print on paper and glass

Courtest of the artist, Arcadia Missa, London and Chapter NY, New York

Restoration
2022-25

Dolls

Courtest of the artist, Arcadia Missa, London and Chapter NY, New York

Untitled (No Place for Violence)
2024

Cotton and rope

Courtest of the artist, Arcadia Missa, London and Chapter NY, New York

365
2024-25

Four-channel sound (13 mins 52 secs)

Courtest of the artist, Arcadia Missa, London and Chapter NY, New York

This work contains recordings made by the artist as well as found and edited material from the internet and media. Sources include Bell Ringers of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Bell Ringing of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin: I. New Church (Bell Tower), 2021; Choir of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church performing Paul Speratus’, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her, EG 342, 2021; Nina Simone on HARDtalk, BBC, 1999; London Tube Commuters Chant ‘Free Palestine’, Middle East Eye, 2023; bell hooks on A Word for Words, Nashville Public Television, 1999; Charli XCX, 365, 2024; History Debunked, 2025; Trans Rights Activists Protest Against Gender Court Ruling, Channel 4, 2025; and Rihanna, Lift Me Up (Acapella Studio), 2022, among others.

Mohammed Sami uses metaphor and ambiguity to create paintings about memory and conflict.

For his Turner Prize presentation, Sami brings together paintings he created after an invitation to exhibit new work at Blenheim Palace. Built in the 18th century to reward the military triumphs of the first Duke of Malborough, the palace is adorned with art that can be seen as glorifying warfare and power – a viewpoint challenged by Sami’s paintings.

Sami’s works are often created from fragmented or distorted memories evoking scenes that feel familiar yet unplaceable. His paintings appear to lack a clear narrative, instead using titles and visual metaphors to offer possible readings. In refusing to offer a single meaning, Sami challenges the notion that historical events and memories are fixed, instead suggesting they can be subjective, emotional or even unstable.

Hiroshima Mon Amour, a key work in the series, appears to show wind, light or a more violent force reacting with a watery surface. The Hunter’s Return references works from art history such as Hunters in the Snow (Winter) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder or The Hunt in the Forest by Paolo Uccello. The painting depicts a military laser in a dust storm, it remains unclear who is the hunter and who is the hunted. Reborn hints at the continued threat of authoritarianism by placing a moth on a semi-erased portrait of a military figure, while On Air alludes to the explosive power of speech and propaganda.

These paintings invite the viewer to consider the causes and effects of conflict. Each canvas becomes a space for tension between history, memory and individual interpretation.

Hiroshima Mon Amour
2024

Mixed media on linen

Courtesty of the artist, Modern Art, London and Luhring Augustine, New York

The Grinder
2023

Mixed media on linen

Courtesy of Blenheim Art Foundation

The Hunter’s Return
2025

Mixed media on linen

Private Collection

Reborn
2023

Mixed media on linen

Courtesy of Blenheim Art Foundation

On Air
2024

Acrylic on linen

Courtesty of the artist, Modern Art, London and Luhring Augustine, New York

White Flash/Dark Materials
2024

Mixed media on linen

Courtesy of Modern Art, London and Ken Li

Massacre
2023

Mixed media on linen

Courtesty of the artist, Modern Art, London and Luhring Augustine, New York

Nnena Kalu makes large-scale hanging sculptures and drawings. Her bold abstract works use mark making, layering and different materials and scales.

This exhibition brings together sculptures Kalu originally made for Manifesta 15 in Barcelona that she has reworked here at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. Alongside them are a selection of drawings from an ongoing series of works she started in 2021 that featured in Conversations, an exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

To create her sculptures, Kalu begins with a loop, tube or structure that forms a base. Around these forms she wraps, folds and knots streams of repurposed fabric, rope, tape, cling film, paper and VHS tape. These brightly coloured lengths and strips come together to form bundles, sometimes resembling nests or cocoons. Finishing her works on site, Kalu responds to the space and character of where she is working.

Kalu’s drawings echo her sculptures, often consisting of powerful vortexes made with swirling, overlapping lines. The drawings here were made after the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was awarded a studio in recognition of her developing practice following years of sharing with other artists. This extra space allows Kalu to work on a larger scale, creating drawings of a greater intensity than before. They could also point to a release of creative energy following the lockdowns and a period of being unable to make work.

In the centre of the room:

Hanging Sculpture 1-10.
Barcelona/Bradford
2024-25

Plastic tubing, fabrics, adhesive tapes, plastics, VHS tape, paper and rope

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Clockwise around the room:

Drawing 12
2021

Acrylic pen, pen, graphite and soft pastel on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 4
2021

Pen on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 29
2022

Acrylic pen, pen and graphite on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 40
2022

Acrylic paint stick, pen, chalk and graphite on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 46
2022

Pen, graphite and oil sticks on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 53
2022

Ink, pen and graphite on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 72
2022

Acrylic pen and pen on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Drawing 14
2021

Acrylic pen, pen and oil pastel on paper

Courtesy of the artist, ActionSpace, London and Arcadia Missa, London

Zadie Xa creates installations that imagine alternative worlds. Her work explores themes such as spirituality, interspecies communication and cultural traditions, particularly from her own Korean and Canadian background.

Xa’s presentation Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything uses painting, sound, textiles and sculpture to consider links between ocean life, generational grief, Korean shamanism and ghostly spirits. Xa’s work often involves collaboration, and she worked closely with artist Benito Mayor Vallejo to realise the exhibition design, mural and sculptural elements of this display.

In the centre of the gallery hang hundreds of shamanic bells, forming the outline of a shell titled Ghost. The ringing of bells in Korean culture can be used to attract or repel spirits. Around the edges of the room, four more seashells project a soundscape inspired by nature, confessions and the music of Salpuri, a traditional Korean exorcism dance.

The painted walls depict a sun and moon in perpetual rise and fall. The landscape feels ambiguous, and it appears unclear whether we are looking at the sea, the sky or an alternate realm.

Xa’s paintings echo the Korean practice of bojagi, where scraps of cloth are stitched together to make textiles for wrapping objects or for domestic rituals. Scenes of marine life and folk practices appear within these colourful patchworks. The largest, La Danse Macabre, imagines a conversation between a shaman, human dancers and sea creatures, in a setting that could be this world or a transition into the next. Xa invites us to consider the state of the oceans and what its inhabitants, living or deceased, would say to us if they could speak.

In the centre of the room:

Zadie Xa and Benito Mayor Vallejo
Confessions Under Moonlight
2025

Four-channel sound installation (14 mins 15 secs), mixed media

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Audio includes content courtesty of Octavia E. Butler Parable of the Sower, Ursula K. Le Guin The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and Alice Walker Calling all Grandmothers

Zadie Xa and Benito Mayor Vallejo
Ghost
2025

Brass bells and bamboo string

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Clockwise from the gallery entrance

Zadie Xa
Night Cocoon
2025

Oil paint and oil bar on stitched linen

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Zadie Xa
The Blunt Edges of a Blade Will Still Cut Flesh (Self Portrait at 40)
2024

Oil and oil bar on washed and machine-stitched linen

Courtesy of a private collection and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Zadie Xa
La Danse Macabre
2024

Mixed media

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Zadie Xa
The Expulsion of Evil (May You Receive What You Wish for Others) 2
2025

Oil paint and oil bar on stitched linen

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Zadie Xa
The Wellspring of Childhood/Ayyushun (Soft Under Feet)
2025

Oil paint and oil bar on stitched linen

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul

Zadie Xa
Vigil for Sweet Girl
2024

Oil paint and oil bar on stitched linen, wood, seashell and beads

Courtesty of the artist and Thaddaeus Ropac gallery, London, Paris, Salzburg, Milan, Seoul