Zadie Xa shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2025
Zadie Xa is one of the four artists shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2025, alongside Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić and Mohammed Sami.
The Turner Prize is one of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts. It aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art.
The prize is awarded each year to a British artist, and is named in honour of the radical painter JMW Turner. In the year that the UK celebrates the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, the Turner Prize is heading to Bradford.
The shortlisted artists – Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa – were announced on 23 April 2025, 250 years to the day since the birth of Turner. Their work will feature in the annual Turner Prize exhibition, which takes place at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. The winner will be announced in Bradford on 9 December 2025.
Zadie Xa was nominated for her presentation ‘Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything’ with Benito Mayor Vallejo at Sharjah Biennial 16. Her work interweaves painting, mural, textile and sound. She focuses on the sea as a spiritual realm to explore traditions and folklore, speaking to a multitude of cultures. Her vibrant installation blended a soundscape with ethereal paintings, bojagi patchwork and an interactive sculpture of over 650 brass wind chimes inspired by Korean shamanic ritual bells. The jury felt that this cohesive work was a sophisticated development of Xa’s reflective and enchanting practice.
