Meet the 2022 Shortlist

Over the past two years, we have witnessed radical paradigmatic shifts in the ways that we live, communicate, work and play – as well as how we travel, socialise and experience the joys of culture.The Aesthetica Art Prize is an annual celebration of contemporary art. The exhibition, which brings together this year’s talented finalists, invites you to explore, discover and engage with themes from our rapidly changing world – wide-ranging topics that include the ethics of representation, mass digitisation, globalisation, diasporic identities and the continuing threats posed by the climate crisis.  

24 June – 18 September | York Art Gallery, UK
Free entry.

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Winners’ Interviews

Baff Akoto

Baff Akoto’s winning film Leave the Edges is an immersive dreamscape that explores the complex ancestries of African diasporic cultural expression.

Yukako Tanaka

Yukako Tanaka reflects on the accelerated transition of human condition in a new era, which can be defined as posthuman / transhuman.

Artist Interviews

Akihiro Boujoh

Akihiro Boujoh’s work encompasses sculpture, installation and photography to explore the emerging chasm between nature and human activities.

Bart Price

Bart Price’s practice is grounded in the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk, a creative process where different art forms are combined to create a cohesive whole.

Elise Guillaume

Elise Guillaume is a Belgian artist and filmmaker whose work explores our complex relationship with nature, which has become imbalanced.

Guen Murroni

Guen Murroni’s work – as a member of a direct-action group, fighting cuts to domestic violence services – has played a major role in her practice.

Ingrid Weyland

Ingrid Weyland’s work alters and enacts “violent gestures” on the land, contorting images until the landscapes become something altogether different..

Jason Bruges Studio

Jason Bruges Studio is an award-winning multidisciplinary art and design practice: a pioneer of the hybrid space between art, architecture and tech.

K Young

K Young’s methodology is based around social constructs and gender identity: examining spatial representation, form and the notion of time and place.

Marcus Lyon

The research-based ‘Human Atlas’ project highlights individuals who are championing change and driving social impact in all its forms.

Omar Torres

Through the exertion of total control, the work of Omar Torres represents situations of resistance and tolerance, pushed to breaking point.

Rebecca Lejić-Tiernan

Rebecca Lejić-Tiernan’s work explores how the camera can expand the psychological tensions experienced between staged and natural realities.

Sara Choudhrey

Themes of space, place, heritage and identity are explored in Sara Choudhrey’s work. She conducts studies in pattern, colour, light and texture.

Sarah Maple

Sarah Maple’s work challenges the interrelated notions of identity, religion, feminism, freedom of expression and the apparent status quo.

Sophie Dixon

Working across film, 3D technologies and installation, Sophie Dixon’s projects explore the themes of memory, and history, both real and virtual.

Steve Messam

Steve Messam’s temporary, eye-catching installations exploit colour, scale and narratives, creating a moment of interruption in the familiar.

Terrence Musekiwa

Terrence Musekiwa comes from a long line of sculptors. The shaping of stone, at the heart of the work, is inherited from the artist’s father.

Ulf Konig

Art meets architecture, constructivism contrasts functionalism: these aphorisms characterise Ulf Konig’s project Architecture Criticism.