The Aesthetica Art Prize is delighted to present a shortlist of 20 international artists who confront the biggest issues facing humanity today. Art is a powerful catalyst for change: breaking down walls, shaking up old narratives, and sparking urgent conversations that question the world as we know it. At a time when the future feels uncertain, these works relentlessly confront the advancement of technology, the existential realities of climate change, the deep scars of colonialism and the ongoing fight for gender equality and racial justice. These bold, boundary-pushing artists – whose mediums span painting, photography, sculpture, video and installation – are on display at York Art Gallery from 17 July.
Kazuaki Koseki | The Himebotaru species of firefly are native to the Japanese forest of Yamagata. Unlike other species, these fireflies emit light in bursts. Photographer Kazuaki Koseki captures these flashes before combining multiple images to show a scene that is illuminated by hundreds of “fairies.”
Filip Haglund | Climate change is impacting the oceans through warming, acidification and rising sea-levels. 4 Oceans considers these major shifts, exposing the vulnerability of both nature and humanity, revealing these bodies of water to be shared spaces linking human and ecological histories.
Jarrett Murphy | The surreal nocturnal landscapes in The Ecotone explores the tension between human control and the wilderness. Murphy uses exposures as long as two hours to create otherworldly scenes, with vivid colours that examines nature as both shaped by and resistant to human intervention.
Felipe Castelblanco | Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath explores the entangled histories of plants and colonial extraction. We see an Indigenous man thrust from the Colombian Amazon to the Swiss Alps. The work combines science, ethnomedicine and ecology, encouraging viewers to question their worldview.
DIVA | This three-channel video reflects on the artist’s identity as a Black French woman in New Orleans through the lens of another diasporic experience: a Mardi Gras Indian Queen. The work explores how artistic archives, cultural memory and testimony shape belonging across diasporic histories.
Alexis Pichot | The Marche Céleste series was a response to the artist’s experience of living in the dense urban environment of Paris. Pichot spent more than a year visiting the forest of Fontainebleau at night, looking to experience the physical and spiritual regeneration for which the landscape is known.
Claudia Behrensen | How has humanity’s mistreatment of the environment caused irreversible damage? Sacred Bond includes powerful images which imagine a dystopian future where we have continued to fail to protect our surroundings; the organic world has been destroyed, and only images of it remain.
Hope Strickland | This moving-image piece uses water to weave together stories: the construction of a reservoir in Rochdale; a boat trip in a lagoon in Falmouth, Jamaica; a raft ride down the Martha Brae River in Jamaica. The poetic title emphasises the impact humans have on geography and how it impacts us.
Jeonghan Yun | Photograph Drawing III encourages audiences to question how we define photography and drawing. The work is composed of analogue slide films woven into a grid and illuminated from behind. The photographic fragments are layered and repeated to prevent there being one fixed view.
Edgar Martins | Martins met with and befriended individuals who wrote suicide letters or missives intending to harm others, only to reconsider. Last year, Martins began photographing these documents, using medical imaging techniques and equipment to obscure the content of the letters.
Neville Gabie | At Sea follows the journeys of three child migrants. Neville Gabie met these children as they were awaiting “processing.” At the time, Gabie was documenting fulmars, seabirds which migrate across oceans. The artist draws a parallel between the trauma of these young people and the fulmars.
Sara Campaci | Each of Campaci’s collages assembles found photographs to create incomplete figures, a metaphor for conflicted identity. Through disruption, the images attempt to embrace the beauty and complexity of multiplicity. They show that it is possible to be whole while containing many selves.
Teti | This painting was made during the Covid-19 pandemic. In it, the view of a monochrome cloud-filled sky is cut off by a black bar and void at the bottom of the canvas, obstructing the audience’s vision. Six years later, the work serves as a reminder of global destruction, loss and a complex time in human history.
Yasuaki Matsuura | Drawing on over a decade of experience designing cameras and imaging technologies, Matsuura uses the camera to explore how memory is shaped by the systems we use. He looks at how platforms, cloud services and AI influences what we capture, store and later see again.
Neil Armstrong | The verse in this video, spoken as a rhythmic conversation between a male and female voice, is from a poem written by the artist in 2014. The piece responded to the overwhelming effect of rapid media coverage of global conflict, online misinformation, hinting at pandemics and AI fabrications.
Liza Dracup | Dracup surveys the cultural and ecological significance of environments in Northern England. The series was created while travelling through nature and using experimental photographic processes. The artist uses photography to trace the emotional and physical experiences of travel.
Tommy Goguely | Digital technologies often appear invisible or seamless, only drawing attention to themselves when they fail. Goguely damaged digital cameras by scratching, drilling and altering the photosensitive surfaces. Colours smear and glitch across the frame, or dissolve into speckles and “noise.”
Magid Magid | Returning to sites of racist and anti-Muslim violence in the UK, Magid Magid visits spaces touched by fear and reclaims them through presence, faith, and stillness. The video contrasts violent footage of these attacks with calm and dignified scenes in which Magid returns to pray at the same sites.
Chrissy Lush | The artist focuses on unexpected intrusions and gestures that unsettle familiar settings. Each images centres on a disruption: firecrackers erupt in a driveway, car headlights illuminate a dance in a darkened room, and an art reaches through a bedroom window to present a cassette tape.
Katharine Dowson | A trimmer is a delicate, mushroom-shaped stricture that is found on the surface of the HIV virus. This structure helps it invade cells and avoid detection by the immune system. Here, Dowson depicts its microscopic complexity in eight intricately laser etched glass blocks.
These artists will feature in States of Becoming, the Aesthetica Art Prize 2026 Exhibition at York Art Gallery from 17 July – 15 November. Find out more: yorkartgallery.org.uk
Words: Emma Jacob
Image Credits:
1. Chrissy Lush, The Visitor, (2025). 2. Kazuaki Koseki, Hotarubi -Summer Fairies, (2023). 3. Filip Haglund, 4 Oceans, (2025). 4. Jarrett Murphy, The Ecotone, (2025). 5. Felipe Castelblanco, Tunda: A Quantic Plant and the Devil’s Breath (2025). 6. DIVA, Memoria 2020: When Memories are No Longer Enough (2025). 7. Alexis Pichot, MARCHE CÉLESTE (2025). 8. Claudia Behrensen, Sacred Bond, (2024-2025). 9. Claudia Behrensen, Sacred Bond, (2024-2025). 10. Hope Strickland, a river holds a perfect memory, (2024). 11. Jeonghan Yun, Photography Drawing III, (2021). 12. Edgar Martins, A brief history of impossible solutions for insoluble problems, (2025). 13. Edgar Martins, A brief history of impossible solutions for insoluble problems, (2025). 14. Neville Gabie, At Sea, (2022 / 2025). 15. Sara Campaci, The Fragmented Self, (2023-ongoing). 16. Teti, Cut Off, (2021). 17. Yasukai Matsuura, Distance, Reflex, Panorama, (2024). 18. Neil Armstrong, The Tipping Point, (2020). 19. Liza Dracup, Fractured Routes, (2024). 20. Tommy Goguely, Digigrams, (2024). 21. Magid Magid, Faith Amongst the Ruins, (2025). 22. Chrissy Lush, Arrival, (2025). 23. Katharine Dowson, A window to a future of an HIV Vaccine, (2015).
