Erste Bank Art Prizes 2025 awarded to Alina Sokolova and Željka Aleksić
Sokolova and Aleksić are graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Works by the two "emerging artists" were auctioned at the 2025 Academy Auction. Now both have been honored by Erste Bank and DAS WEISSE HAUS.
The Erste Bank Art Award 2025 goes to Alina Sokolova
Alina Sokolova (*1995, Uzhhorod, Ukraine) studied Visual Arts in Uzhhorod/UA, sculpture, and installation at the Academy of Fine Art and Design, Bratislava/SK, and photography as a guest student at HFBK in Hamburg/DE. In 2021 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna/AT.
https://alinasokolova.com
Jury statement:
"Alina Sokolova's artistic practice takes the intensity, vulnerability, and weirdness of being alive nowadays and creates a deep, fragmented yet coherent storyline which is in the abyss between the personal and the political. Her expressive paintings - along with the expanded painterly space she develops through collaborations with other creators, often extending into video projections and choreographic forms - unfold as a kind of visual diary. This body of work traces her experience as an artist and a woman, reflecting on rising conflicts, political uncertainty, and the haunting presence of war. Through symbolist and surrealist motifs, Sokolova navigates a world where the very right to life is continually questioned".
Alina Sokolova's solo exhibition at DAS WEISSE HAUS opens on September 9, 2025!
The Erste Bank Recognition Art Award goes to Željka Aleksić
Željka Aleksić (b. 1989, Knjaževac, Serbia) is a visual artist working across painting, performance, and performative sculpture. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna in 2023, in Contextual Painting under the mentorship of Ashley Hans Scheirl and Despina Stokou. In 2023, she received the Academy Prize for her diploma thesis. That same year, she was awarded the Kunsthalle Wien 2023 Recognition Prize and was selected for the Academy Studio Program scholarship program in the Creative Cluster.
Instagram: @aleksiczeljka
Jury statement:
"Željka Aleksić in her practice reveals the price of becoming and being an artist, both literally and poetically. She details the hardships of manual labor, the precariousness of an ever-expiring residence status, and the power of matriarchal support that shape the conditions under which she, and many others, study and make art. [...] Aleksić's work becomes a site where personal survival and artistic agency converge, acting as both an act of creation and a strategy of endurance, exposing how the pursuit of a meaningful artistic life is inseparably linked to the fight for basic rights, recognition, and belonging".