The Aesthetica Art Prize is delighted to present a shortlist of 25 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 19 September.
Àsìkò | In New World Giants, photographer Àsìkò takes Yoruba and Caribbean traditions and situates them in British townscapes. Here, towering masquerades stand in sharp contrast to surrounding architecture, highlighting themes of displacement and adaptation, and offering a mediation on cultural transformation.
Ayo Akingbade | Akingbade’s film focuses on the 1962 opening of the Guiness factory in Ikeja, Lagos. The Fist links Nigeria’s post-independence era to global industrialisation, revealing the quiet politics embedded in daily production and consumption. The piece considers broader themes of power and colonial legacy.
Stephen Johnston | The artist’s hyperreal paintings capture fragile blooms suspended in jars, set against black voids. The still life ruminates on memory and impermanence, with the luminous flowers preserved but already fading. Johnston’s refined techniques offers a quiet reflection on the passage of life and death.
Gala Hernández López | This double-screen experimental film draws on YouTube, archival footage and 3D animation to examine how digital capitalism shapes desire and aspiration. The work critiques a generation raised on symbolic and material dispossession, asking how digital culture narrows future possibilities.
Vlad Hrynko | Vlad Hrynko merges a background in computer science with fine art. His Foundation series experiments with traditional still-life forms and projected light, challenging how we see ordinary objects. The work combines physical installations made of found materials with carefully orchestrated lighting.
Princess Arinola Adegbite | In this Afrofuturist poem, two lovers navigate separation through a liminal digital space shaped by algorithms, disconnection and desire. Moments of tenderness collide with the weight of global crisis. The work questions how emotion, memory and humanity survive in a virtual world.
Ellie Davies | Davies has long explored themes of belonging, memory and ecological fragility. Seascapes Triptych combines forest landscapes with overlays of sea light, creating layered images that speak to the growing impact of climate change. The intrusion of water suggests rising sea levels, pollution and tourism.
Bart Nelissen | Datascapes addresses the overwhelming accumulation of digital data and the human effort to extract meaning from it. Nelissen reduces digital cloudscapes into geometric fragments, offering a mediation on abstraction, technology and the urge to rationalise the world through pattern recognition.
Emma Scarafiotti | Nettuno: Birth of a Shell is a 16mm digital film exploring queerness as a post-human utopia and the rejection of fixed identity. Scarafiotti merges cinema vérité, documentary, performance and scientific research to portray the body as a shell – constantly fluid, shifting and open to transformation.
Michelle Blancke | Blancke uses photography as a painter might use a brush – adjusting composition, light and framing to shift perception. Her images dissolve the boundary between real and imagined. They present landscapes charged with energy and mystery and reveal invisible layers of emotion and thought.
Liz Miller Kovacs | Supernatural places the female body within scarred, extractive landscapes to explore environmental destruction and the objectification of femininity. Liz Miller Kovacs photographs herself in situ, echoing classical poses and connecting personal vulnerability with wide-scale planetary crisis.
Kate Hrynko | Faded Ice documents a series of ephemeral artworks made from frozen, coloured objects that vanish through sublimation – the direct transformation of ice into gas without becoming liquid. Hrynko blends photography and painting, creating abstract compositions that emphasise impermanence.
Sarah Maple | Mother Tongue explores language, identity and cultural disconnection. Sarah Maple recalls growing up in a Punjabi-speaking household but never learning the language herself. The work speaks to the silence between generations, and how language – when absent – can become a barrier to belonging.
Sujata Setia | A Thousand Cuts explores patterns of domestic abuse within South Asian culture, drawing on the metaphor of “Lingchi”- an ancient torture method – to reflect the soul-eroding nature of repeated harm. Survivors’ portraits, printed on A4 paper, are cut with a knife, symbolising their lived experiences.
Brendan Dawes | Nothing Can Ever Be The Same, commissioned for Biennale Musica 2023 in Venice, is a 168-hour real-time generative film. Using bespoke generative technology developed for the Academy Award-shortlisted documentary Eno, the film continuously evolves, ensuring no two versions are alike.
Mónica Alcázar–Duarte | Mónica Alcázar-Duarte explores human origins through a dual narrative: one grounded in ancient ecological knowledge, the other in advanced astronomical research. This work challenges viewers to reflect on their place within nature and the cosmos, urging care for the Earth.
Susanna Wallin | Following the passing of a neighbour in Florida, Susanna Wallin inherited an electric organ. When plugged in, the organ released a wild, unplayed sound – all notes at once. Wallin works in film, sound and performance, considering the instrument as a symbol of transition and unresolved presence.
Tobi Onabolu | Onabolu is an artist-filmmaker and writer from London, now based in Benin Republic. Danse Macabre combines poetry, music, archival audio and movement to represent both the conscious and unconscious mind. Dancers, singers and voices animate this portrait of healing and expanded awareness.
Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark | Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark challenges historical portrayals of Black anatomy by reconstructing the Black body with precision and dignity. This silicone sculpture emerges from a three-month process to capture anatomical detail. Each element speaks to strength, beauty and defiance.
Sam Metz | Porosity reflects Sam Metz’s sensory experience of the Humber Estuary. Bright yellow structures echo how they see the water’s reflection through ocular albinism, a genetic condition that affects the eyes. These modular sculptures invite viewers to explore through movement and touch.
Sof | Geo 1 transforms mosaic into a living surface. Viewers become participants, touching and reshaping the material to release light hidden behind the work. This act uncovers meanings and transforms the piece in real time. Magnetic fields, matter and light shift and respond, making each experience entirely unique.
Peter Spanjer | SWIM tells the story of two boys who meet at a public pool and form an ambiguous bond. Their relationship unfolds without clarity – neither fully sexual nor strictly platonic. The film blends sound and text to examine the queer Black body and its complex presence in spaces often marked by exclusion.
Joanne Coates | Coates documents rural working-class life in North East England through photography and installation. Her work gives voice to overlooked communities, focusing on gendered labour and class politics. These pieces form a portrait of an area shaped by economic precarity and historical neglect.
Hussina Raja | STATION examines identity, migration and collective memory. Hussina Raja weaves together images different moments: from the arrival of South Asian and Caribbean communities in post-war Britain, anti-racist protests in Tower Hamlets, and the presence of Asian Dub Foundation in the early 2000s.
Morgan Quaintance | Quaintance’s research-led practice embraces open-ended storytelling that resists fixed meaning, exploring how film constructs psychological and social truths. Surviving You, Always delves into the complexities of urban life and fragmented narratives through written narration and still images.
These artists will feature in the Aesthetica Art Prize 2025 Exhibition at York Art Gallery from 19 September – 25 January.
Want to get involved? The next edition of the Prize is open for entries. Submit your work by 30 September. Win £10,000, exhibition and publication. Find out more here.
Image Credits:
1&13. Liz Miller Kovacs, Supernatural, (2024). 2. Àsìkò, New World Giants, (2022). 3. Ayo Akingbade, The Fist, (2022). 4. Stephen Johnston, Flowers in a Jar no.11, (2024). 5. Stephen Johnston, Flowers in a Jar no.5, (2024). 6. Gala Hernández López, for here am i sitting in a tin can far above the world, (2024).
5. Vlad Hrynko, Foundation, (2024). 7. Adam Cain, Lois Macdonald, Princess Arinola Adegbite, Time Pops Like Chewing Gum, (2024). 8. Ellie Davies, Seascapes Triptych, (2023). 9. Bart Nelissen, Datascapes, (2023). 10. Emma Scarafiotti, Nettuno: Birth of a Shell, (2023). 11. Michelle Blancke, Secret Garden, (2023). 12. Stephen Johnston, Flowers in a Jar no.11, (2024). 14. Kate Hrynko, Faded Ice, (2024). 15. Kate Hrynko, Faded Ice, (2024). 16. Sarah Maple, Mother Tongue, (2024). 17. Sujata Setia, A Thousand Cuts, (2023). 18. Sujata Setia, A Thousand Cuts, (2023). 19. Brendan Dawes & Gary Hustwit, Nothing Can Ever Be The Same, (2023). 20. Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Space Nomads, (2023–2024). 21. Susanna Wallin, Lizzy, (2024). 22. Tobi Onabolu, Danse Macabre, (2023). 23. Rayvenn D’Clark, Untitled, (2016). 24. Sam Metz, Porosity I, II, III, (2023-2025). 25. Sof, Geo 1, (2020). 26. Peter Spanjer, SWIM, (2024). 27. Joanne Coates, The Object, Pen with Tattoo / The Portrait / The Vinyl, (2023). 28. Hussina Raja, STATION, (2022). 29. Morgan Quaintance, Surviving You, Always, (2021).
