2025 Joan Miró Prize Awarded to Kapwani Kiwanga
152May 12, 2025
The Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona, has presented this year’sJoan Miró Prizeto French-Canadian multidisciplinary artist Kapwani Kiwanga. The Hamilton, Ontario–born Kiwanga, who lives and works in Berlin and Paris, will receive a €50,000 (roughly $56,000) grant and, in 2026, a solo exhibition at the foundation. The artist triumphed over a shortlist comprising Jumana Emil Abboud, Arahmaiani, Bonnie Devine, and Christodoulos Panayiotou.
Born in 1978, Kiwanga is known for a research-based practice spanning sculpture, installation, photography, video, and performance, and investigating themes of colonialism, gender, power, and the African diaspora. Originally studying anthropology and comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, she went on to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. She represented Canada at the 2024 Venice Biennale and is the recipient of honors including the Zurich Art Prize (2022), the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2020) and the Sobey Art Award (2018).
The jury in a statement praised Kiwanga’s “precise formulation and careful formalization of historical and social developments that have shaped contemporary realities” as well as her “carefully researched and conceptually impeccable approach,” further lauding her “luscious treatment of fabrics and ceramics, of color, light and space, [which give] her installations an elusive aura that promises to establish a potent dialogue with the architecture of Josep Lluís Sert at the Fundació Joan Miró.”
The Miró Prize, launched in 2007, is awarded biannually to contemporary artists whose work embodies the same spirit of exploration, innovation, commitment, and freedom that marked the Surrealist artist’s life and work. This year’s iteration is sponsored by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Spanish car maker Cupra. To date, the honor has gone to Olafur Eliasson (2007), Pipilotti Rist (2009), Mona Hatoum (2011), Roni Horn (2013), Ignasi Aballí (2015), Kader Attia (2017), Nalini Malani (2019), and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (2023). No prize was awarded in 2021, as the art world struggled to emerge from the Covid-19 crisis.