Shilpa Gupta, who lives and works in Mumbai, India, has won the Possehl Prize for International Art 2025. She will receive €25,000, while a solo exhibition of her work at Kunsthalle St. Annen in Lübeck will open on 27 September 2025.
Gupta is the third artist to win the prize, which is awarded every three years, following Doris Salcedo and Matt Mullican. For over two decades she has explored religion, censorship, freedom of expression in her multidsciplinary work, looking in particular at state boundaries, geographic and psychological borders, and questions of national identity. The jury highlighted her sensitive handling of political issues, as well as her use of the wide range of media in her practice, which spans sound-based works, video projections, drawings, interactive digital installations and performances.
The jury for this year’s iteration of the prize was composed of Dr. Anette Hüsch, director of Kunsthalle zu Kiel; Prof. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, director of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Dr. Florence Thurmes, general director of Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz; Noura Dirani, director of Kunsthalle St. Annen Lübeck; Dr. Tilmann von Stockhausen, managing director of Kulturstiftung Hansestadt Lübeck; Max Schön, chair of the Possehl Foundation.
The Possehl Prize for International Art is awarded by the Possehl Foundation, created in 1919 to support art and architecture in Lübeck. Awarded in the categories of sculpture, installation, new media and performance, intermedia connections between different forms in an artist’s body of work are given particular weight.
