A Turner Prize shortlist that J.M.W. Turner might have appreciated (2025)

LONDON – Mohammed Sami, an Iraqi painter who once created murals of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and Zadie Xa, a Canadian artist of Korean heritage, are among the nominees for 2025’s Turner Prize, the organisers of the prestigious British art award announced on April 23.

The four artists up for the prize – the others are Nnena Kalu and Rene Matic – were revealed at a news conference at the Tate Britain museum in London on the 250th anniversary of the birth of J.M.W. Turner, the 19th-century painter for whom the prize is named.

Mr Alex Farquharson, Tate Britain’s director and the chair of the prize jury, said there were traces of Turner’s art in some of the shortlisted artists’ work, including in the “sublime, swirling” compositions of Xa’s murals and Sami’s paintings of war-torn Iraq, which he called “a new type of history painting”.

Mr Farquharson said Turner himself might not have seen the similarities between the nominees’ work and his own, but added: “The language of contemporary art had expanded so much in the past 250 years.”

Among this year’s nominees, Sami, 40, has the highest profile. In 2023, Sotheby’s sold one of his paintings for more than US$400,000 (S$526,000), and he has a work on display in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Born in Baghdad, Sami left Iraq after the United States-led invasion that toppled Hussein and was granted asylum in Sweden. He studied at the Belfast School of Art in Northern Ireland and at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Each artist – who must be British or working predominantly in Britain – is nominated for an exhibition held during the previous 12 months, and the Turner Prize judges selected Sami for After The Storm, a solo show held at Blenheim Palace, a home in the English countryside.

British art critics raved about that show when it opened in 2024. Art critic Waldemar Januszczak wrote in The Sunday Times that Sami’s paintings were “a shadowy mix of figuration and abstraction” that “give their meanings slowly”.

Xa, 41, made the shortlist for Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, And Earth Remembers Everything, an installation made with fellow artist Benito Mayor Vallejo that is showing at the Sharjah Biennial 16 in the United Arab Emirates through June 15.

The work combines large-format paintings, recorded sounds and an arrangement of 650 brass wind chimes inspired by Korean shamanic ritual bells.

A Turner Prize shortlist that J.M.W. Turner might have appreciated (1)

Kalu, 58, an artist with learning disabilities, received a nomination for a series of colourful sculptures made from fabric and videotape that she displayed at 2024’s Manifesta art biennial in Barcelona, where they hung from the ceiling of a disused power station.

The youngest nominee is Matic, 27, for the show As Opposed To The Truth at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Berlin. That exhibition included a collection of black dolls that Matic found online and in thrift stores, as well as photographs and a sound work.

Founded in 1984, the Turner Prize is one of the art world’s most respected awards. Damien Hirst, Steve McQueen and Lubaina Himid have won it. The winner receives £25,000 (S$43,700), as well as a significant boost in profile.

In 2024, the award went to Jasleen Kaur, whose installation work focused on her childhood growing up in a Scottish Sikh community. Other recent winners have included Jesse Darling and Veronica Ryan.

A free exhibition of work by the 2025 slate of nominees will open at the Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, a city in northern England, on Sept 27 and run through Feb 22. The jury will announce the winner during a ceremony in the same city on Dec 9. NYTIMES

A Turner Prize shortlist that J.M.W. Turner might have appreciated (2025)

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