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.
Between changing and being changed
guojun tian
With the development of society and the comprehensive construction and coverage of industrialization and the digital era, the available land for humans is gradually shrinking. To meet the needs of construction and development, we have had to take certain "measures" for expansion. However, in this process of rapid development, we have also overlooked the delayed "drawbacks" caused by these methods. On this ancient and biologically diverse planet, our old "friends" are quietly disappearing — species extinction caused by habitat destruction, human hunting, and the inability to survive due to environmental changes. According to incomplete statistics, nearly 40,000 species worldwide are currently facing the threat of extinction. Meanwhile, just like humans, these species fear death but are forced to confront reality. This work aims to reflect on the relationship between humans and biodiversity. When our "friends" eventually all pass away, we are left facing a single answer — death. Just as when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at us. The television placed in the wooden box is set below the conventional range of sight, requiring viewers to bend down or squat to see inside. This design choice is intended to convey the idea that humans and other species on Earth exist in a state of "equality" or near-equality, rather than at the "top" of a pyramid. It also subtly suggests the true position of humans within nature.
With the development of society and the comprehensive construction and coverage of industrialization and the digital era, the available land for humans is gradually shrinking. To meet the needs of construction and development, we have had to take certain "measures" for expansion. However, in this process of rapid development, we have also overlooked the delayed "drawbacks" caused by these methods. On this ancient and biologically diverse planet, our old "friends" are quietly disappearing — species extinction caused by habitat destruction, human hunting, and the inability to survive due to environmental changes. According to incomplete statistics, nearly 40,000 species worldwide are currently facing the threat of extinction. Meanwhile, just like humans, these species fear death but are forced to confront reality. This work aims to reflect on the relationship between humans and biodiversity. When our "friends" eventually all pass away, we are left facing a single answer — death. Just as when we gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at us. The television placed in the wooden box is set below the conventional range of sight, requiring viewers to bend down or squat to see inside. This design choice is intended to convey the idea that humans and other species on Earth exist in a state of "equality" or near-equality, rather than at the "top" of a pyramid. It also subtly suggests the true position of humans within nature.