The Maria Lassnig Foundation has awarded their 2025 Prize to Carrie Yamaoka. She will receive €50,000 and an exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, this year’s partner institution, in 2026.
Carrie Yamaoka is a Japanese-American interdisciplinary artist whose work explores materials, surfaces and processes of transformation through painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. In 1991 she became a founding member of the queer art collective fierce pussy. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, including at MoMA PS1, New York; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Yamaoka was selected by a jury composed of Peter Pakesch, chairman of the Maria Lassnig Foundation; Alexander Klar, director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle; Hans Ulrich Obrist, artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries; Matthias Mühling, director of the Lenbachhaus, Munich; Rosa Barba, artist; Brigitte Kölle and Corinne Diserens, both curator and director of the contemporary art collection, Hamburger Kunsthalle.
Now in its fifth edition, the Maria Lassnig Prize is a biennial award for mid-career artists. Previous winners include Lubaina Himid (2023), Atta Kwami (2021), Sheela Gowda (2019) and Cathy Wilkes (2017).
Main Image: Carrie Yamaoka, self-portrait. Courtesy the artist