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.
27
Apă
206
Title:
Apă
Apă
Author:
duo Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko
duo Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko
Description:
Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko 15 photographies | 60x50 cm | 2020 https://dutca-sidorenko.com/apa Magical water lilies, an amphibian creature, a former scientist looking like a babushka and a crochet rug take place in the heart of a river. This is a setting and the protagonists of the fable told by the duo Dutca-Sidorenko. In the form of a visual tale, the artists’ duo dedicate their joint work to the Dniester River, which is rises in the Carpathian mountains and flows into the Black Sea. Carolina Dutca, who is from Bender, a small town near the river, wants to evoke various issues related to the river, such as excessive sand exploitation, abandoned ships, floods that erode the water and waste dumps. While researching the history of Transnistria, a Moldavian region bordering Ukraine, the artists discovered that the White Water Lily was an endangered species. Their meeting with Elena Nikolaevna, a former biology teacher, fascinated by her father’s childhood stories about a vanished amphibian world, encouraged them to recreate a new legend, that of 'Apă'. Together they invent a story, where multicoloured embroidered rugs, extravagant costumes worn by extras, syntetic water lilies, and stranded frogmen are part of a battered and deserted nature. Elena Nikolaevna then becomes the protagonist of her own story with the amphibious creature she has named Apă, “water” in Moldavian. The former biologist collects the waste that pollutes the waters of the river with Apă to make ‘magic’ rugs. The result is a set of 15 photographs, in which a set of characters and scenes unfold the tradition of popular theatre.
Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko 15 photographies | 60x50 cm | 2020 https://dutca-sidorenko.com/apa Magical water lilies, an amphibian creature, a former scientist looking like a babushka and a crochet rug take place in the heart of a river. This is a setting and the protagonists of the fable told by the duo Dutca-Sidorenko. In the form of a visual tale, the artists’ duo dedicate their joint work to the Dniester River, which is rises in the Carpathian mountains and flows into the Black Sea. Carolina Dutca, who is from Bender, a small town near the river, wants to evoke various issues related to the river, such as excessive sand exploitation, abandoned ships, floods that erode the water and waste dumps. While researching the history of Transnistria, a Moldavian region bordering Ukraine, the artists discovered that the White Water Lily was an endangered species. Their meeting with Elena Nikolaevna, a former biology teacher, fascinated by her father’s childhood stories about a vanished amphibian world, encouraged them to recreate a new legend, that of 'Apă'. Together they invent a story, where multicoloured embroidered rugs, extravagant costumes worn by extras, syntetic water lilies, and stranded frogmen are part of a battered and deserted nature. Elena Nikolaevna then becomes the protagonist of her own story with the amphibious creature she has named Apă, “water” in Moldavian. The former biologist collects the waste that pollutes the waters of the river with Apă to make ‘magic’ rugs. The result is a set of 15 photographs, in which a set of characters and scenes unfold the tradition of popular theatre.
Description:
Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko 15 photographies | 60x50 cm | 2020 https://dutca-sidorenko.com/apa Magical water lilies, an amphibian creature, a former scientist looking like a babushka and a crochet rug take place in the heart of a river. This is a setting and the protagonists of the fable told by the duo Dutca-Sidorenko. In the form of a visual tale, the artists’ duo dedicate their joint work to the Dniester River, which is rises in the Carpathian mountains and flows into the Black Sea. Carolina Dutca, who is from Bender, a small town near the river, wants to evoke various issues related to the river, such as excessive sand exploitation, abandoned ships, floods that erode the water and waste dumps. While researching the history of Transnistria, a Moldavian region bordering Ukraine, the artists discovered that the White Water Lily was an endangered species. Their meeting with Elena Nikolaevna, a former biology teacher, fascinated by her father’s childhood stories about a vanished amphibian world, encouraged them to recreate a new legend, that of 'Apă'. Together they invent a story, where multicoloured embroidered rugs, extravagant costumes worn by extras, syntetic water lilies, and stranded frogmen are part of a battered and deserted nature. Elena Nikolaevna then becomes the protagonist of her own story with the amphibious creature she has named Apă, “water” in Moldavian. The former biologist collects the waste that pollutes the waters of the river with Apă to make ‘magic’ rugs. The result is a set of 15 photographs, in which a set of characters and scenes unfold the tradition of popular theatre.
Carolina Dutca and Valentin Sidorenko 15 photographies | 60x50 cm | 2020 https://dutca-sidorenko.com/apa Magical water lilies, an amphibian creature, a former scientist looking like a babushka and a crochet rug take place in the heart of a river. This is a setting and the protagonists of the fable told by the duo Dutca-Sidorenko. In the form of a visual tale, the artists’ duo dedicate their joint work to the Dniester River, which is rises in the Carpathian mountains and flows into the Black Sea. Carolina Dutca, who is from Bender, a small town near the river, wants to evoke various issues related to the river, such as excessive sand exploitation, abandoned ships, floods that erode the water and waste dumps. While researching the history of Transnistria, a Moldavian region bordering Ukraine, the artists discovered that the White Water Lily was an endangered species. Their meeting with Elena Nikolaevna, a former biology teacher, fascinated by her father’s childhood stories about a vanished amphibian world, encouraged them to recreate a new legend, that of 'Apă'. Together they invent a story, where multicoloured embroidered rugs, extravagant costumes worn by extras, syntetic water lilies, and stranded frogmen are part of a battered and deserted nature. Elena Nikolaevna then becomes the protagonist of her own story with the amphibious creature she has named Apă, “water” in Moldavian. The former biologist collects the waste that pollutes the waters of the river with Apă to make ‘magic’ rugs. The result is a set of 15 photographs, in which a set of characters and scenes unfold the tradition of popular theatre.