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.
Brotes de Jilotes
Benjamin Stephenson
Brotes de Jilotes is a site-specific, time-based sculptural installation composed of melting ice sculptures inspired by Olmec iconography. Installed in a bed of soil, these ephemeral forms slowly dissolve, revealing seeds embedded within the earth. The work is a meditation on climate change, cultural heritage, and the cycles of loss and renewal. By referencing ancient Mesoamerican aesthetics and employing a material as impermanent as ice, the piece invites viewers to reflect on the fragility of both ecological and cultural systems. As the sculptures melt, they become active agents in the transformation of their environment—watering the soil and symbolically nurturing the next generation of growth. Rooted in my ongoing exploration of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, Brotes de Jilotes speaks to themes of ephemerality, resilience, and memory. It is part of a wider practice using raw, natural materials to create immersive works that respond to place, history, and myth. As a public, time-sensitive intervention, the piece offers an embodied experience of impermanence and regeneration in a rapidly changing world.
Brotes de Jilotes is a site-specific, time-based sculptural installation composed of melting ice sculptures inspired by Olmec iconography. Installed in a bed of soil, these ephemeral forms slowly dissolve, revealing seeds embedded within the earth. The work is a meditation on climate change, cultural heritage, and the cycles of loss and renewal. By referencing ancient Mesoamerican aesthetics and employing a material as impermanent as ice, the piece invites viewers to reflect on the fragility of both ecological and cultural systems. As the sculptures melt, they become active agents in the transformation of their environment—watering the soil and symbolically nurturing the next generation of growth. Rooted in my ongoing exploration of humanity’s relationship with the natural world, Brotes de Jilotes speaks to themes of ephemerality, resilience, and memory. It is part of a wider practice using raw, natural materials to create immersive works that respond to place, history, and myth. As a public, time-sensitive intervention, the piece offers an embodied experience of impermanence and regeneration in a rapidly changing world.