Dolls, VHS tape and war trauma: 2025 Turner Prize shortlist revealed

In his 1890 poem the Conundrum of the Workshops, Rudyard Kipling's devil studies the works of humankind and asks, among other question, 'It's clever, but is it art?'

He may well be asking the same question again today with the unveiling of the 2025 Turner Prize shortlist.

This year's nominations include an artist with a series of dolls 'salvaged' from thrift shops and online auctions, a sculptor who works with fabric wrapped in VHS tape and a mural artist who, as a child, painted propaganda for Saddam Hussein's regime.

Announced today at Tate Britain - on what would have JMW Turner's 250th birthday - the shortlist has attracted criticism for failing to be revolutionary in the same way as previous years.

Some of the works exhibited by the shortlisted creatives address right-wing populist politics, skinhead culture and refugees.

Last year's winner, Jasleen Kaur, walked away with a £25,000 prize for her works. They included, among others, a red Ford Escort cabriolet draped in an oversized doily.

Previous Turner prize shockers have included Damien Hirst, who won with a bisected cow and calf preserved in formaldehyde shocked art lovers in 1995, and Tracey Emin, who was nominated for her messy unmade bed in 1999.

This year's nominees will be exhibited at Bradford's Cartwright Hall; the city is the 2025 UK City of Culture, and continues the tradition of alternating the host of the prize between the Tate and other parts of the country each year.

Rene Matić

Peterborough artist Rene Matić was nominated 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.

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'.

Their work looks at themes including 'the constructed self through the lens of rudeness', which they have taken from 'rudeboy' culture, the Jamaican subculture that spread in the UK in the 1960s.

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 large white flag quoting political leaders who called for 'no place for violence' in the wake of the attempted assassination of US President Donald Trump.

Nnena Kalu

Glasgow-born Kalu is a resident artist at ActionSpace's studio, which supports artists with learning disabilities across London, at Studio Voltaire.

The artist, who is autistic and largely non-verbal, creates large-scale abstract sculptures and drawings that hang down from the wall or ceiling.

Her works 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, commissioned by Manifesta 15 Barcelona arts festival to be hung in a disused power station.

She was also recognised for her work in Conversations, a group exhibition at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, of abstract swirls on paper.

Judges commended for 'her unique command of material, colour and gesture and her highly attuned responses to architectural space'.

Zadie Xa 

Canada-born Xa, 41, who studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and the Royal College of Art in London, has taken influence from her Korean background and the country's 'spiritual rituals' and 'shamanism'.

She is nominated for Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything (2025).

The installation - a series of paintings with sound inspired by Salpuri, a Korean exorcism dance and a sculpture inspired by wind chimes and Korean shamanic rattles - was created with Spanish artist Benito Mayor Vallejo.

It was previously shown at the shown at the United Arab Emirates' Sharjah Biennial art exhibition.

The Turner Prize judges say her work focuses on 'the sea as a spiritual realm', and the work was 'reflective and enchanting'.

Mohammed Sami 

Iraqi painter Sami, 40, was born in Baghdad - and aced his way through school by painting propaganda murals for Saddam Hussein's regime.

The dyslexic artist agreed to paint murals in exchange for passing maths and English, but later sought asylum in Sweden after Saddam's government fell in the second Gulf War.

He then studied at the Belfast School of Art and Goldsmiths College, London.

His work After The Storm, exhibited at Churchill's birthplace Blenheim Palace, covers this era of his life, from his life in Baghdad to his new life in the West.

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.

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.'

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.

Turner prize nominations are infamously divisive and 2025 is no different - with some critics accusing the jury of having political agendas, or for not choosing works provocative enough to be worthy of the prize.

In the Guardian, art critic Jonathan Jones - himself a one-time Turner judge - said the prize had 'lost its edge' as 'ideologies loom larger'.

'Clearly the jury are striking a blow against Brexity Little Englanders by shortlisting an artist from Vancouver whose art reclaims her Korean heritage – but who meets the rules by being resident in the UK,' he wrote of nominee Xa.

'But this shortlist’s lack of connection with the realities of contemporary Britain is just another way to dig the ailing Turner prize deeper into irrelevance and empty bourgeois ritual.'

Telegraph chief art critic Alastair Sooke, meanwhile, said the list lacked 'pizazz'.

'There is a legitimate sense that the annual, £25,000 award is in the doldrums of a midlife crisis, and nowadays attracts mostly lukewarm enthusiasm, or, worse, indifference,' he wrote.

'This year’s shortlist may not allay such concerns. It’s respectable and hard to fault, rather than controversial.'

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