Erasmus Prize 2026
Image: Steve McQueen, Bass, 2024. Installation view, Dia Beacon, New York, 2024–25.
© Steve McQueen. Photo: Bill Jacobson Studio, New York.
ART
Steve McQueen
Erasmus Prize
The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has awarded the 2026 Erasmus Prize to artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen. The theme of this year’s Prize is Ecce Homo, Behold the Human Being. McQueen is known for exploring who we are in moments of vulnerability, how we treat each other, and how history shapes our present, without judgment nor fear of moral complexity. He first gained recognition in the 1990s as a visual artist with experimental video works such as Bear (1993), demonstrating without words, the intense attraction and aggression between two main characters. His status as a pioneering artist was confirmed through his exhibitions at leading institutions and with the prestigious Turner Prize award in 1999.
Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2026-2028
Image: Han Ishu, The Weight Between You and Me. Exhibition view, BEYOND GLITCH: Remapping Reality in a Broken World, Kyoto International Conference Cente, Kyoto, 2023. Photo: Moriya Yuki.
ART
Han Ishu
Tokyo Contemporary Art Award
Han Ishu and yang02 have been named winners of the sixth Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA). Although Tokyo-based, Han Ishu is a rare recipient of the TCAA in that he was born outside Japan, in Shanghai. His practice—spanning video, installation, photography and painting—often utilises his own body and mundane objects to navigate the friction between individuals and social structures. The selection committee noted that Han’s work is driven by a "strong sense of motivation originating from personal experience", with his diasporic perspective serving as a bridge between the self and others.
Image: yang02, TEFCO vol.2 ~Under Control~. Exhibition view, MOT Annual 2023 Synergies, or between creation and generation, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, 2023. Photo: Kigure Shinya.
ART
yang02
Tokyo Contemporary Art Award
Kanagawa-based artist yang02, who describes himself as an artist of "post post-humanism", designs installations where human-centred actions, including creating and viewing, are replaced by machines. His project, TEFCO (Tokyo Electricity Farming Community) (2023) involves self-built gravity-powered generators that allow visitors to charge their smartphones. By transforming the exhibition space into a "power station", yang02 humorously questions the violence inherent in technology and the invisible systems governing modern convenience.
About the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award
FRAME Awards 2026
Image: Sebastian Renga, Materia Futura chair, 2025. EconitWood (recycled wood-based composite), 108.7 × 88.3 × 66.4 cm (L × W × H).
Photo: Riccardo Androni.
DESIGN
Materia Futura
Winner of the month for March
March FRAME Awards winner Sebastian Renga transforms wood dust into durable furniture with Materia Futura. According to juror Ismael Medina Manzano, the chair redefines archtetypes, presenting an ‘alternative to conventional mass production.’ The product of a research-driven, Materia Futura is a chair produced using EconitWood, a wood-based compsite made of waste from sawmills and the timber industry. Through the object, Sebastian Renga presents a vision of wooden furniture based on additive manufacturing – an alternative to the traditionally subtractive process of woodworking.
Prix Rubis Mécénat 2026
Image: Rémi Marcel, Digestion goutte à goutte, February 2026. © Rémi Marcel
ART
Rémi Marcel
Prix Rubis Mécénat
Rémi Marcel is the 2026 winner of the Prix Rubis Mécénat in collaboration with the Saint-Eustache church and the Beaux-Arts de Paris. In the autumn, he will unveil his site-specific installation for the Saint-Eustache church. Rémi Marcel will present an installation comprising two half-columns modelled on those of the church, one being the imprint of the other, like an archaeological relic. The installation represents the process of germination: from seed to fruit, from an underground existence towards the light. This journey is made partially visible. The duality of the works reveals a spiritual and metaphysical reflection in dialogue with the site.
Schering Stiftung Award 2026
Image: Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, video still, El Nido del Sol, 2021. Photo: © the artists.
ART
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos
Schering Stiftung Award
Schering Stiftung and KW Institute have announced the Mexican artist collective Colectivo Los Ingrávidos as the winner of the 2026 Schering Stiftung Award for Artistic Research. Founded in 2012 amid major protests against the Mexican government, the Tehuacán-based film collective Colectivo Los Ingrávidos uses film as a means of rebellion. Working collaboratively and anonymously, they seek to deconstruct the individual artist’s authority and to reveal the ideology embedded in mainstream media. Their work experiments with documentary approach, found footage, and analogue and digital mediums.
About the Schering Stiftung Award
2026 Spotlight Award
Image: TEN, House for Five Women, Gradacac, Bosnia, 2021.
ARCHITECTURE
TEN
Spotlight Award
The Rice School of Architecture has announced TEN, operating between Belgrade and Zurich, as the recipient of the 2026 Spotlight Award. Cofounded by Ognjen Krašna and Nemanja Zimonjić, TEN produces building prototypes, urban propositions, algorithmic design investigations, and material research in collaboration with a broad network of partners, institutions, and clients. The practice treats research, experimentation, and collaboration as core drivers of design. Each project is conceived as an evolving prototype. TEN’s approach challenges the traditional notion that architecture is the pursuit of a finished project and instead leverages an open-ended process of experimentation that seeks new spatial configurations, tectonic assemblages, and social relationships.
