Honorees are decided by a distinguished panel comprised of international judges who selected her based on her profound impact and innovation. Panelists included: Hoor Al-Qasimi, President and Director, Sharjah Art Foundation; Elena Filipovic, Director, Kunstmuseum Basel; Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator, Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), Cape Town, and Curator, 61st International Art Exhibition (2026), La Biennale di Venezia; Jessica Morgan, Nathalie de Gunzberg Director, Dia Art Foundation, New York; Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine, London; Adriano Pedrosa, Artistic Director, Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP); Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, Hong Kong; Franklin Sirmans, Director, Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); and Philip Tinari, Director and Chief Executive, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing. The medalists were first recognized at Art Basel in Basel, Switzerland, in June.

The artist has recently unveiled ‘Nairy Baghramian. nameless’ at WIELS in Brussels—a presentation that spans multiple floors and unfolds as an expansive dialogue between newly conceived bodies of work and the institution’s post-industrial architecture.

About the artist
Nairy Baghramian’s work traverses the realms of sculpture, installation, photography and drawing with fearless experimentation, historical acuity and conceptual rigor. Particularly in her prime medium of sculpture, the artist employs an extensive repertoire of techniques, materials and forms to address the spatial, architectural, social, political and contextual conditions of contemporary art. Using an abstract vocabulary that often combines geometric shapes and organic matter, industrial process and gestural procedure, Baghramian’s abstract yet eminently allusive works subtly explore the ligatures between art and other fields of object production (most notably interior design, dance and theater) in order to evoke and address bodies of all variants in both their vulnerability and obstinacy. Through her innovative use of materials and manipulation of familiar forms, Baghramian’s work invites viewers to reconsider their sense of self, space, object and site.