Pérez Art Museum Miami Awards Javier Téllez $50K Prize
51Nov. 18, 2025
Pérez Art Museum Miami(PAMM) has namedmultidisciplinary artist and filmmaker Javier Téllezas the recipient of the 2025 Pérez Prize. Inaugurated in 2019, the award recognizes artistic achievement with an unrestricted grant of $50,000. Téllez was presented with the prize on November 15 during the museum’s Art of the Party fundraiser.
“Pérez Art Museum Miami is honored to present this year’s Pérez Prize to Javier Téllez, an artist whose work continues to expand how we see and who gets to be seen,” said PAMM director Franklin Sirmans in a statement. “In a moment of increasingly rigid and antagonistic hierarchies, Javier’s use of wit, humor, and imagination challenges us to see differently, to listen more deeply, and to create a more empathetic world. We are proud to recognize his vital practice that expands the possibilities of empathy, dignity, and community.”
The Venezuela–born Téllez lives and works in New York and is known for a practice encompassing film, installation, video, and collage. The son of two psychiatrists, Téllez has made mental health a major subject of his oeuvre, often questioning the definition of sanity as a fixed rather than a shifting state. Among his best-known works are the 2007 film Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See, in which sightless participants describe their experience of touching an elephant; the 2008 film Caligari and the Sleepwalker, exploring the border between perception and reality; and Amerika, 2024, a film responding to the decade-long displacement of more than seven million Venezuelans, some 60,000 of whom now live in New York.
“In my films and video installations, I often collaborate with disenfranchised members of society to address issues such as migration, disabilities, and mental illness, questioning power structures and dismantling notions of the normative,” remarked Téllez. “Receiving the prestigious Pérez Prize encourages me to continue my work with greater strength and visibility.”