38Jan. 22, 2026
Peruvian artistAntonio Paucar, known for his work drawing on Andean culture, has been announced as the winner of the eleventhArtes Mundi Prize. The biennial award is administered by Artes Mundi, an international arts organization founded in Cardiff, Wales, in 2002 to support contemporary visual art. Paucar joins a list of prizewinners that includes John Akomfrah, Theaster Gates, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He will receive £40,000 (approximately $54,000).
Born in 1973 in Huancayo, Peru, and dividing his time between Huancayo and Berlin, Paucar uses performance, sculpture, and video to explore such topics as the assassination of Indigenous leaders, environmental threats, and surveillance technology. Related United States Artists Announces 2026 Recipients of $50,000 Fellowships Warhol Foundation Names Fall 2025 Grantees
“It is profoundly meaningful to receive this award,” said Paucar in a statement. “Over the last few years, I began restoring the abandoned adobe house of my grandparents. It is important to me to safeguard the house and workshop of my ancestors. It seems equally appropriate to me that this space be transformed into a small, independent art school, given that the nearest and largest city, Huancayo, does not have an art school nor a museum of art. With the support of the Artes Mundi 11 prize, I will continue concretizing and making the aforementioned projects a reality—projects where the social, the communal, and the political will take shape together from the need to revalue and empower the knowledge of my community and rescue its arts as a true art form.”
The prize jury in a collective statement praised Paucar as “an artist whose expansive practice encapsulates a long-term commitment to and engagement with his local environment and communities, creating work that speaks powerfully to marginalized contexts and extracted histories.” The jury continued, “His sensitive economy of means, grounded in nature, sustainability and attention to resource scarcity, embraces a material and visual experimentation of incisive poetic gestures that extends their reach beyond the limits of constraining political imaginaries.” The group further noted that Paucar’s practice “aligns with Artes Mundi’s support of practices that exist outside the pressures and prototypes of the art market while remaining committed to artistic freedom and experimentation.”
Paucar beat out five other artists who were shortlisted for the prize. These are Jumana Emil Abboud, Anawana Haloba, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Sancintya Mohini Simpson, and Sawangwongse Yawnghwe. The work of all six artists is on view at the National Museum Cardiff through March 1, while Paucar’s work appears in a solo exhibition at Mostyn, Llandudno, through February 21.