International Art Prize 2025 winners

Antwerp

Laura Basterra Sanz

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Final artwork

Windows of Possibility, 2025 - 40 x 40cm, Acrylic on Canvas

Laura Basterra Sanz (b. 1979), a multidisciplinary artist from Barcelona, obtained a BA in Fashion Design from URLL and pursued postgraduate studies in textile printing techniques. Currently, she is expanding her practice through sculpture and spatial art at the RHoK Academy in Brussels.

Copenhagen

Silke Weißbach

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Final artwork

Eden, 2025 - 92 x 183cm, Aloe Vera, Cellulose, Cornflowers, Hyaluronic Acid, Iridescent Pigments, Oil, Red Valerian, Wax on Canvas.  

Silke Weißbach’s (1984, Germany) process driven practice is rooted at the intersection of material alchemy, emotional resonance, and ecological awareness. Her paintings, sculptures, and video installations operate as living systems—environments where biological agents and intangible elements such as light, colour, fragrance, liquids, language, and memory are combined and shaped through slow transformation, and where time and matter co-author the work. Central to her research is an exploration of the ontological and epistemological dimensions of materiality—emphasising interspecies relationships and the agency of materials, within a territory shaped by care, embodied power relations, and shared vulnerability.

London

Charlotte Winifred Guérard

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Final artwork

Vue du Train - 56 x 46cm, Acrylic on canvas board 

Charlotte Winifred Guérard (b.1998, Rouen, France) previously studied at the University of Brighton. Guérard primarily makes paintings, exploring the ways these can be displayed or set into motion: In a machine on a boat, as a backdrop for dancers, or as screens on wheels. Her practice combines intuitive processes of experimenting with the material of paint; with the quest to shift the traditional format of this medium.

New York

Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway

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Final artwork

Resilience, 2025 - 91.44cm x 91.44cm, Oil paint, Mopping Wool on Canvas.  

Cecilia Lamptey-Botchway is a US-based Ghanaian mixed media artist versed in figurative painting, performance, abstractism and textile making. Her practice also encompasses ideas about gender roles and womanhood, crafting works and performances that comment on societal challenges she and her fellow African women face. Born to a family of painters and textile designers, Cecilia’s childhood was characterized by lessons in batik, textile making and designing.

Nottingham

Michelle Heron

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Final artwork

‘Out of Fashion, 2025 - 56 x 46cm, Acrylic on canvas board 

Using paint to explore the overlooked and abandoned, British artist Michelle Heron immortalises the many threatened independent stores that make our high streets what they are. Michelle's figurative paintings take viewers on a nostalgic trip down memory lane, documenting the many distinct shop fronts, greasy spoons, and launderettes of bygone eras.

Influenced by iconic realists Edward Hopper and George Shaw, Michelle approaches her work with a sensitive use of colour and light to capture the mood and feel of everyday scenes. She maintains an incredibly human touch in her urban works, combining style, technique, and feeling to give life to her locations.

Shanghai

Zhongwen Hu

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Final artwork

Myriad, 2025 - 80 x 116cm, Acrylic on Canvas 

Zhongwen Hu is a Shanghai-based painter, illustrator, and animator. Her work emphasizes scenes of positive energy — joy, tranquility, love — that spring up in the seemingly mundane motions of everyday life. Bringing emotional sensitivity to the canvas, her work can be found in galleries, books and commercial products.

International Art Prize 2024 winners and artworks

London

Shannon Bono

Selected by Curator & Writer Ekow Eshun, Shannon’s paintings embody an Afrocentrist consciousness, using oils, acrylics and spray paints to produce layered and figurative compositions, centralising black womanhood as a source of knowledge and understanding. Bono merges African fabric designs with scientific imagery, creating a visual language rooted in magic and divination. Holding an MA in Art & Science from Central Saint Martins, and an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art Shannon is also supported by the Sir Frank Bowling scholarship.

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Hong Kong

Chan Wai Lap

Chan Wai Lap’s artistic practice draws inspiration from personal experience, memories, and everyday happenings. Passionate about swimming, his recent ‘swimming pool’ series was created with fine pencil on paper, each tile reconstructed individually and brought together in an illusion perspective. For Lap, the swimming pool is a sanctuary for meditation and introspection while also representing the blurred boundary between private and public life, offering the artist with an open yet intimate access to local cultural conventions and urban psyche.

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New York

Takura Suzuki

Selected by Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Founder of Salon 94 and Salon 94 Design, Takura’s work focuses on the relationship between contemporary digital technology and humans, combining iconography with classical still life. Tokyo-born, Takura lives and works in Brooklyn. He earned his BFA in Painting from Indiana University Bloomington and recently graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with an MFA in Visual Arts in 2021.

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Paris

Matthieu Livrieri

Matthieu makes figurative works of vibrant and unfiltered images of his lived experiences. Working in both drawing and painting in an expressive and stylized visual language. Through fragmented perspectives and an exuberant play of colours, each work captures a singular moment of a character, a voyeuristic snapshot of daily life, immersed in solitude and imbued with melancholy.

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Tokyo

Brittni Bell Warshaw

Brittni recently began painting again after a 10-year hiatus and career as a commercial food photographer. Inspired by Renaissance colour palettes and techniques, Brittni works in acrylic and oil pastels, primarily on raw and treated canvas. Her work explores the themes of identity, motherhood, and personal evolution.

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Los Angeles

Adam de Boer

Using traditional Javanese techniques such as ‘Batik’ (wax-resist dyeing) Adam’s artistic exploration of heritage draws on Western painting history and Southeast Asian traditional craft. His work analyses cultural difference, with a view to highlighting the essential value of sustained engagement to build truly inclusive societies. Adam was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship for 2017-18 and is a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow for 2021-2025.

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