Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2025
Jonida Laçi & Luīze Nežberte

Jonida Laçi (b. 1990, Durrës, Albania) and Luīze Nežberte (b. 1998, Riga, Latvia) have been awarded the Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2025. Established initially in 2002, it is organised in collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. The prize aims to both recognise and support a new generation of artists with an annual award for outstanding diploma presentations selected from candidates working in different media and with diverse subject matter. Laçi and Nežberte receive a joint exhibition at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz with an exhibition catalogue published in German and English and a € 3,000 award.

The exhibition has been developed to reflect the cohesion between the two distinct and autonomous practices of Laçi and Nežberte, who each present versions of their diploma exhibitions, with site-specific adaptations and new works for its presentation at Kunsthalle Wien Karlsplatz.

Jonida Laçi

Jonida Laçi studied in the departments Art and Space | Object as well as Art and Time | Media at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Employing a range of media, Laçi creates works that exist between sculpture, video, photography, installation and text-based practices. She explores the production and perception specific to each medium through questions around form, the gaze, translation and the parameters of standardisation. Laçi’s diploma presentation Ajar (2025) utilised spatial installations to interrogate framing and modes of display in the construction of images and sculptures, enlisting viewers as active participants in the construction of meaning. Often influenced by details from everyday life, much of her work examines how socio-economic inscriptions are embedded in familiar materials, spaces and procedures – shaping affects and knowledge.

Luīze Nežberte

Luīze Nežberte studied Sculpture and Space at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her work considers methods of collecting, quoting and recontextualising material via sculpture, often working with existing architectural forms. Through an engagement with personal memory, vernacular form and historical narratives, she examines how each work reshapes these relations in an exhibition context. Nežberte’s diploma presentation We could listen much longer, but it is late by now (2025) centred around sculptural reinterpretations of historical architecture, taking the Gaides Meeting House (built in 1739 by Latvian followers of the Moravian Brethren) as a point of departure. Nežberte reinterprets these forms as spatial installations, utilising common building materials such as MDF and drywall, in order to investigate how cultural memory is negotiated through process of reconstruction and material transformation.

Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2025 Juries

For the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, organised by Christine Rogi:

Michelle Cotton (Artistic Director, Kunsthalle Wien), Sarah Crowe (Assistant Curator, Kunsthalle Wien), Johan F. Hartle (Rector, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Judith Huemer (Associate Professor Art and Intervention | Environment, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna), Maximilian Lehner (Press/PR, Kunsthalle Wien), Gina Merz (Assistant Curator, Kunsthalle Wien), Carolina Nöbauer (Programme Curator, Tanzquartier Wien) and Christian Schwarzwald (Professor Art and Image | Graphics, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

For the University of Applied Arts Vienna, organised by Jasmin Vogl:

Michelle Cotton (Artistic Director, Kunsthalle Wien), Peter Kozek (Artistic Director Angewandte Performance Lab, Prize Winner Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2002), Maximilian Lehner (Press/PR, Kunsthalle Wien), Gina Merz (Assistant Curator, Kunsthalle Wien), Carolina Nöbauer (Programme Curator, Tanzquartier Wien), Cornelia Offergeld (Curatorial Director, KÖR Kunst im Öffentlichen Raum Wien), Astrid Peterle (Head of Curatorial and Programming, Kunsthalle Wien) and Lisa Truttmann (Visual Artist and Filmmaker, Prize Winner Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2009)

The Kunsthalle Wien Preis 2025 is realized with the kind and generous support of Kunsttrans and smc Steirer Mika & Comp.