Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2025

The Kunsthalle Wien Preis [Kunsthalle Wien Prize] seeks to support emerging artists living and working in Vienna and to promote discourse on contemporary art via an annual collaboration with Vienna’s two renowned art universities. Jointly organised by Kunsthalle Wien together with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, it is awarded annually by a jury of experts to a graduate of each of the universities. Now in its eleventh year, the prize is intended to support recent graduates, building a bridge between academic study and professional practice, while bringing the work of these artists to a broader public.

The selected artists receive a joint exhibition and publication with texts commissioned from Mirela Baciak and Chris Clarke as well as a prize of € 3,000 each.

Jonida Laçi

Jonida Laçi studied Art and Space | Object as well as Art and Time | Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and was awarded the Kunsthalle Wien Preis for her installation Ajar (2025). The work is made up of video projections, sculpture and a readymade. Laçi’s discrete sculptural and spatial structures have been employed with moving projected image, in order to play upon the shaping of the image. Similarly, projectors and tripods are approached as sculptural objects with the intention of interrogating the framing, reception and perception of images.

Luīze Nežberte

Luīze Nežberte studied Sculpture and Space at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and was awarded the Kunsthalle Wien Preis for her work We could listen much longer, but it is late by now (2025). Nežberte examines found objects and historical forms in order to uncover their material and cultural histories. She reinterprets historical architectural forms to explore how cultural memory is transmitted, erased and transformed through material absence and sculptural interpretation. Nežberte’s sculptural interventions describe an overlap between personal memory, traditional architecture and historiography.