Turner Prize shortlist includes artist who uses 'salvaged' antique dolls in work

An artist who uses dolls “salvaged” from thrift shops and online in their work and another who uses VHS tape are among those on the shortlist for the Turner Prize 2025.

Peterborough artist Rene Matic was among the four shortlisted artists announced at the Tate Britain on Wednesday for their first institutional solo exhibition, called As Opposed To The Truth, which touches on ideas of the rise of right-wing populism and identities.

Alongside Matic were three fellow London-based artists, Glasgow-born Nnena Kalu, Mohammed Sami, who first moved to Sweden after leaving Iraq, and Canada-born Zadie Xa.

Matic, 27, was praised by the jury for expressing “concerns around belonging and identity, conveying broader experiences of a young generation and their community through an intimate and compelling body of work”.

Rene Matic (Diana Pfammatter; Courtesy the Artist and Arcadia Missa, London) PA Media

Their work looks at themes including “the constructed self through the lens of rudeness”, which they have taken from rudeboy culture, a Jamaican subculture in the UK.

It includes personal photographs of family and friends in stacked frames, paired with sound, banners, and an installation at the Centre for Contemporary Arts Berlin, Germany.

They also have an ongoing collection called Restoration, which focuses on “antique black dolls salvaged by the artist” and a flag quoting political leaders who called for “no place for violence” in the wake of the attempted assassination of US President Donald Trump.

Kalu, born in Glasgow in 1966, is a resident artist at ActionSpace’s studio, which supports learning disabled artists across London, at Studio Voltaire.

She creates large-scale abstract sculptures and drawings that hang down from the wall or ceiling.

Nnena Kalu’s work at Manifesta (Ivan Erofeev/Manifesta) PA Media

The items are made from colourful streams of repurposed fabric, rope, parcel tape, cling film, paper and reels of VHS tape.

Kalu is nominated for her installation Hanging Sculpture 1-10, which Manifesta 15 Barcelona commissioned her to create at a disused power station, and her presentation in Conversations, a group exhibition at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

The works contain ten large brightly coloured sculptures that hung among the grey concrete pillars of the industrial site, and a work in pen, graphite and chalk pen on two pieces of paper.

She was commended for “her unique command of material, colour and gesture and her highly attuned responses to architectural space”.

Rene Matic’s work in Berlin (Diana Pfammatter/CCA Berlin) PA Media

Xa, 41, who studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and the Royal College of Art in London, is influenced by her Korean background and its “spiritual rituals, shamanism, folk traditions and textile practices”.

She is nominated for Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything (2025), which was created with Spanish artist Benito Mayor Vallejo and shown at the United Arab Emirates’ Sharjah Biennial.

It has a sound element inspired by Salpuri, a Korean exorcism dance, and a mobile sculpture inspired by seashell wind chimes and Korean shamanic rattles, which has 650 brass bells that make harmonised sounds.

Painter Sami, 40, born in Baghdad, has studied at the Belfast School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London.

Mohammed Sami’s After the Storm at Blenheim Palace (Tom Lindboe/Blenheim Palace) PA Media

He says: “My paintings seek to capture the state of confusion that occurs because of the cut thread between reality and the imagination; between war narrated and war witnessed.”

Sami was given the nod for After the Storm: Mohammed Sami at Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, which has 14 paintings that respond to the history of Sir Winston Churchill’s birthplace, and contain “hints and references to conflict in Iraq”.

The paintings do not have human figures, while one shows the “shadow of a helicopter blade over a table and empty chairs”, and another appears to suggest body bags.

An exhibition of works will be held at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery from September 27 2025 to February 22 2026 during the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture celebrations.

The winner will be announced on December 9 2025 at an award ceremony in Bradford.

Last year, Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur, who put a doily on a car, won the prestigious art prize, which awards £25,000 to its winner and £10,000 to the other shortlisted artists.

Previous recipients include sculptor Sir Anish Kapoor (1991), artist Damien Hirst (1995), and filmmaker Sir Steve McQueen (1999).