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.
Mykobütten Spores
Tanja Major
In my pioneering work as a paper artist, I explore the innovative transformation of 100% mushrooms into paper fibers. Handmade mushroom paper, colored with mushroom pigments – I call it "mycopaper." I use various techniques of handmade papermaking, such as the Japanese washi technique. I create these from mushrooms using my experiences, ideas, and new design possibilities. Mushrooms, including polypores, trametes, and many more, are the essential and primary substance in my creative process. Their pigments expand my expressiveness. They provide me with a natural material that is very vibrant and inspiring. This creates unusual structures and haptics, sometimes rough, creamy, padded, stable, but also brittle or parchment-like. My works depict microscopically large-scale structures from the mycological world – the world of fungi.
In my pioneering work as a paper artist, I explore the innovative transformation of 100% mushrooms into paper fibers. Handmade mushroom paper, colored with mushroom pigments – I call it "mycopaper." I use various techniques of handmade papermaking, such as the Japanese washi technique. I create these from mushrooms using my experiences, ideas, and new design possibilities. Mushrooms, including polypores, trametes, and many more, are the essential and primary substance in my creative process. Their pigments expand my expressiveness. They provide me with a natural material that is very vibrant and inspiring. This creates unusual structures and haptics, sometimes rough, creamy, padded, stable, but also brittle or parchment-like. My works depict microscopically large-scale structures from the mycological world – the world of fungi.