Welcome to the Social Art Award 2025 – Online Gallery!
We are grateful for the many powerful contributions from artists across the globe. The selected works reflect the diversity of contemporary social art practices and address urgent issues such as climate and water crises, social and economic inequality, migration, conflict, discrimination, and the protection of human and more-than-human life.
Below you will find the submissions from the edition of 2024/2025 that passed the initial jury round. The Online Gallery offers public visibility to these works and supports dialogue around their themes; it does not replace the final jury decision.
Thank you to all artists for sharing your inspiring and committed work. We invite you to explore the gallery and engage with the perspectives shaping the Social Art Award 2025.
Be Yourself
Ozlem Mehder
‘’Be Yourself’’ is a work that advises us to find our inner strength even in the worst conditions. This work tries to convey this message by taking inspiration from nature. The image of dried soil in the work symbolizes a lake whose water has been drained. I drew the female figure by taking inspiration from myself. The wave pattern covering the woman’s entire body reflects the water of this lake. I think that even in conditions that we consider very difficult, we can still find details in ourselves that will remind us of ourselves. Perhaps the waves on the woman will give life to this dried lake again in time. I believe that nature is a very important key that will help us find the power within us. Because we are all a part of nature. However, we are rapidly moving away from nature under the name of modernization. Most of us spend our days among concrete. The age we live in makes us mechanical. We are forced to deny the roots of our existence among concrete. We need nature: We have to protect it.
‘’Be Yourself’’ is a work that advises us to find our inner strength even in the worst conditions. This work tries to convey this message by taking inspiration from nature. The image of dried soil in the work symbolizes a lake whose water has been drained. I drew the female figure by taking inspiration from myself. The wave pattern covering the woman’s entire body reflects the water of this lake. I think that even in conditions that we consider very difficult, we can still find details in ourselves that will remind us of ourselves. Perhaps the waves on the woman will give life to this dried lake again in time. I believe that nature is a very important key that will help us find the power within us. Because we are all a part of nature. However, we are rapidly moving away from nature under the name of modernization. Most of us spend our days among concrete. The age we live in makes us mechanical. We are forced to deny the roots of our existence among concrete. We need nature: We have to protect it.