Groundbreaking Achievement: 2025 Turner Prize Goes to Nnena Kalu, First Artist With Learning Disability to Win Prestigious Award

Dec. 9, 2025: Nnena Kalu winner of the Turner Prize 2025, pictured in her exhibition at Cartwright Hall in Bradford, UK. | Photo: James Speakman/PA Media Assignments, Courtesy Tate

THE UK’S TOP ARTIST PRIZE has been announced. London-based artist Nnena Kalu (b. 1966) won the Turner Prize 2025. She received the honor at a ceremony in Bradford on Dec. 9.

The Turner Prize recognizes, and encourages debate around, new developments in British contemporary art. Kalu’s practice spans sculpture, installation, and two-dimensional works on paper. She makes cocoon-like, hanging sculptures layering and building up her works by persistently wrapping the amorphous shapes and forms with unconventional materials, including masking tape and shiny ribbon from VHS tapes. Her large-scale drawings are infinite swirls that look like spiraling vortexes. Across mediums, the works are defined by her color sense and repetitive and rhythmic gestures.

“I always think of Nnena’s practice as working to her own innate rhythm. Whether it’s rapping, whether it’s knotting, whether it’s drawing. It is always to the same rhythm. It’s like listening to the sound of the sea coming in and out. It’s so beautiful seeing Nnena being in her element,” said Shelley Davies in the video below. Davies is an artist facilitator at ActionSpace in London, where Kalu is an artist in residence.

Kalu, who has limited verbal communication, is the first artist with a learning disability to receive the Turner Prize since its inception in 1984. A groundbreaking achievement, the prestigious honor incudes a £25,000 award (about US $33,000).

Dec. 9, 2025: Nnena Kalu was announced as the winner of the Turner Prize 2025 by magician Steven Frayne, formerly known as Dynamo, at a ceremony at Bradford Grammar School. This year, the prize was presented as part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. When she accepted the prize, Kalu was flanked by her supporters at ActionSpace. Shown, from left, Sheryll Catto, artistic director and CEO of ActionSpace; artist Nnena Kalu; and Charlotte Hollinshead, head of artist development at ActionSpace. | Photo: James Speakman/PA Media Assignments, Courtesy Tate

IN APRIL, FOUR ARTISTS were shortlisted for the Turner Prize: Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa. Each was selected based on an exhibition or installation of their work.

Kalu was awarded the annual prize for a presentation featured in “Conversations” at the Walker Art Gallery (National Museums Liverpool), a group exhibition of 40 Black female and nonbinary British contemporary artists, and Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10 at Manifesta 15 (2024) in Barcelona, Spain.

A five-person jury determined the Turner Prize winner. The panel included independent curator Andrew Bonacina; Liverpool Biennial Director Sam Lackey; Priyesh Mistry, associate curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery; and Habda Rashid, senior curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Fitzwilliam Museum. Tate Britain Director Alex Farquharson chaired the jury.

According to the announcement, the jury cited Kalu’s “bold and compelling work, praising her lively translation of expressive gesture into captivating abstract sculpture and drawing. Noting her distinct practice and finesse of scale, composition and colour, they admired the powerful presence these works have.”

Kalu emerged from the shortlist to win the Turner Prize. While she is the first individual artist with a learning disability to receive the prize. She is not the first to be considered. In 2021, Project Art Works in Hastings, UK, was one of five collectives that made the Turner Prize shortlist.

On its website, Project Art Works describes itself as a collaborator “with people with complex support needs, families and circles of support. Our practice intersects art and care, responding to neurodivergence, its gifts and impacts… Our studios provide the conditions for a broad range of autonomous and collaborative practices with neurodivergent artists, who take part on their own terms.”

“From the very beginning it was clear that she was phenomenal and creatively really driven. Her work is really contemporary. It’s really exciting. It’s really fresh. It feels really relatable and it’s just utterly wonderful now that her work is out there.” — Charlotte Hollinshead

Artist Nnena Kalu works across sculpture, installations, and drawing with a command for unconventional materials and a repetitive and gestural process. | Courtesy the Artist and ActionSpace

BORN IN GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, to Nigerian parents, Kalu has a longstanding association with ActionSpace, a visual arts organization that supports and develops artists with learning disabilities. She is a resident artist at ActionSpace’s Studio Voltaire in London, where she makes art on her own terms with support from facilitators and curators.

“I’ve been working with Nnena since 1999. ActionSpace and Nnena have developed together,” Charlotte Hollinshead, head of artist development at ActionSpace, said in the video. “From the very beginning it was clear that she was phenomenal and creatively really driven. Her work is really contemporary. It’s really exciting. It’s really fresh. It feels really relatable and it’s just utterly wonderful now that her work is out there.”

Hollinshead continued: “I feel like every big exhibition she does now brings out something new in her work. You can really see her practice moving forward. This is a huge moment not just for Nnena but for the learning-disabled community across the UK.”

Lisa Slominski is an American writer and curator based in London. She has conducted research with Kalu and ActionSpace as part of her Ph.D., program at Kingston School of Art. “ActionSpace has such an important role acting as agents and as advocates for learning disabled artists and as support for curators and institutions to access and work with learning disabled artists,” Slominski said in the video.

“Nnena’s nomination of the Turner Prize is a watershed moment and incredibly important that a learning disabled artist with limited verbal communication has been nominated and is exhibiting on this level Like at Manifesta being written about being published about. But at the same time, I think it’s very important that we don’t limit her work and her practice to a disability lens only.”

“Nnena’s nomination of the Turner Prize is a watershed moment and incredibly important… But at the same time, I think it’s very important that we don’t limit her work and her practice to a disability lens only.”
— Lisa Slominski

NNENA KALU: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. Bradford, UK. (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

KALU’S PRACTICE has been recognized with notable awards, acquisitions, and exhibitions. “Nnena Kalu: Creations of Care,” the artist’s first solo exhibition outside of the UK was presented earlier this year at Kunsthall Stavanger in Norway (March 20-Aug. 3, 2025). In June, Arcadia Missa exhibited new work by Kalu at Art Basel in Switzerland and Allied Editions featured her work at Frieze London in October.

A Turner Prize 2025 group exhibition featuring works by the four shortlisted artists is currently on view at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford through Feb. 22, 2026. Presented in partnership with Tate, the exhibition is part of Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, a yearlong celebration of heritage and creativity.

“Seeing Nnena and what she’s doing is encouraging younger people that they can do it too. She is a role model,” Sheryll Catto, artistic director and CEO of ActionSpace, said in the video. “Where she is now is amazing and fantastic… who knows where she’ll go from here.” CT

The Turner Prize 2025 exhibition featuring works by Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa will be on view at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, UK, from Sept. 27 2025-Feb. 22, 2026

FIND MORE about Nnena Kalu on ActionSpace website

FIND MORE about the 2025 Turner Prize

NNENA KALU: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery., Bradford, UK (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

NNENA KALU: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

NNENA KALU: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

NNENA KALLU: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

NNENA KULA: Turner Prize 2025 Exhibition, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, UK (Sept. 19, 2025). | Photo by David Levene, Courtesy Tate

BOOKSHELF
“Veronica Ryan: Along a Spectrum” explores the work of Veronica Ryan who won the 2022 Turner Prize. Ingrid Pollard was shortlisted in 2022. These recent volumes capture her work: “Ingrid Pollard: Carbon Slowly Turning” and “Ingrid Pollard: Hasselblad Award 2024.” Publications documenting the work of 2017 Turner Prize winner Lubaina Himid include “Lubaina Himid: Her Art and Creativity,” “Lubaina Himid: Work from Underneath,” and “Lubaina Himid: Make Do and Mend.” Hurvin Anderson was shortlisted in 2017. Published by Rizzoli, “Hurvin Anderson” provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s career. Claudette Johnson was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2024. Her recent publications include “Claudette Johnson: Presence,” “Claudette Johnson: I Come to Dance,” and “Claudette Johnson: Line, Rhythm, Space.” Also consider, “Art Is Art: Collaborating with Neurodiverse Artists at Creativity Explored,” which was published in 2023 to mark the 40 anniversary of Creativity Explored. Located in San Francisco, Calif., the nonprofit “gives people with developmental disabilities the opportunity to express themselves through art and share their work with audiences from their local community and in the contemporary art world.”