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.
Aftermath
Saroj Parmar
In Hinduism, many festivals are related with certain deities (Ganesha, Goddess Durga, Saraswati etc.) and at the end of each such festival, hundreds of thousand idols of related deity are immersed in water bodies like river, pond, sea etc. For example, in 2024 over 200000 Ganesha idols were immersed only in one city Bengaluru in one festival. This ritual is symbolic return of deity to its abode at the end of festival and represents impermanence and cyclical nature of life, hence can’t be called meaningless. But it pollutes water bodies and harms their aquatic ecosystems. Paints and many non-biodegradable materials used in idol making often have heavy metals also. In artwork ‘Aftermath’, I’ve painted one half-decayed idol of Ganesha in a water body.
In Hinduism, many festivals are related with certain deities (Ganesha, Goddess Durga, Saraswati etc.) and at the end of each such festival, hundreds of thousand idols of related deity are immersed in water bodies like river, pond, sea etc. For example, in 2024 over 200000 Ganesha idols were immersed only in one city Bengaluru in one festival. This ritual is symbolic return of deity to its abode at the end of festival and represents impermanence and cyclical nature of life, hence can’t be called meaningless. But it pollutes water bodies and harms their aquatic ecosystems. Paints and many non-biodegradable materials used in idol making often have heavy metals also. In artwork ‘Aftermath’, I’ve painted one half-decayed idol of Ganesha in a water body.