Kapwani Kiwanga has been awarded the 2025 Joan Miró Prize. She will receive a €50,000 grant and a solo show at the Fundació Miró, Barcelona, in 2026.
Kapwani Kiwanga is a multidisciplinary Canadian and French artist based in Paris and Berlin. She trained as an anthropologist at McGill University in Montréal before studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Her work explores the relationship between power, architecture and societal structures. She deliberately blurs reality and fiction in order to destabilise hegemonic narratives and open up spaces for marginalised discourses. Kiwanga represented Canada at the 2024 Venice Biennale. She has also received numerous awards including the Zurich Art Prize (2022), the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2020) and the Sobey Art Award (2018).
Kiwanga was selected from a shortlist including Jumana Emil Abboud (Palestine, 1971), Arahmaiani (Indonesia, 1961), Bonnie Devine (Canada, 1952) and Christodoulos Panayiotou (Cyprus, 1978). The jury highlighted ‘the precision and rigour with which Kapwani Kiwanga formalises historical and social processes that have shaped contemporary realities.’
Founded in 2007, the Joan Miró Prize, supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Cupra, is awarded every two years to contemporary artists whose recent work reflects ‘the spirit of research, innovation and commitment that characterised Miró’s artistic practice.’
Previous winners of the prize include Olafur Eliasson (2007), Pipilotti Rist (2009), Mona Hatoum (2011), Roni Horn (2013), Ignasi Aballí (2015), Kader Attia (2017), Nalini Malani (2019) and Tuan Andrew Nguyen (2023).
