Updates
Emilija Škarnulytė from Lithuania has won the 2023 ARS FENNICA award. The winner was chosen from among five candidates by Anne Barlow, the international expert invited by the award panel for the year 2023
Watch Live Stream on 22.11. at 14:00 (GMT +2), from the announcement of the ARS FENNICA 2023 prize winner.
Get to know ARS FENNICA 2023 candidates. In addition to presenting the candidates, the artists talk about their work and artistic views.
ARS FENNICA Candidates 2025
Norway
Sweden
Nature is depicted in Roland Persson’s painterly silicone sculptures and large-scale installations with an ambiguous tension, balancing destruction and creation. His representations of reality often blend in surreal, dreamlike elements, with plants and animals appearing distorted and mistreated by humanity. Persson’s work features objects or fragments of nature to which he has a special connection or with which he grew up. The subject can also be stories or fantasies that are loaded with something that concerns him personally.
FINLAND
Finland
A joint exhibition showcasing the nominees’ works will be on display at HAM Helsinki Art Museum from October 24, 2025, to March 15, 2026. The winner will be announced in the spring of 2026. The public can also vote for their favorite at the exhibition.
ARS FENNICA 2023
“The decision to give the Award to Emilija Škarnulytė is based on the unique approach that she has demonstrated in her films and immersive installations. Her work is deeply complex in terms of both content and methodology, covering topics such as climate change, extraction, and extinction in ways that combine critical analysis with a searching imagination.”
Anne Barlow, Art expert invited by award panel
From the archive
Eija-Liisa Ahtila Ars fennica 2021 Visual artist and filmmaker Eija-Liisa Ahtila experiments with narration and form in her works that address the gendered, colonial and
Ragna Bley Candidates 2025 Ragna Bley’s large paintings are characterised by organic and fluid forms that leave room for chance and unpredictability. Her art oscillates
Viggo Wallensköld Candidates 2021 Viggo Wallensköld, depicts life’s absurdity through a series of fictional characters. Over the years, his works, which typically feature just one
First ARS Fennica candidates 1991
ARS FENNICA -foundation
The Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation – ARS FENNICA sr was established in 1990 to promote the arts by opening up new channels for Finnish visual art internationally, by providing artists with inspiration in their creative work, and by encouraging interest in and respect for the visual arts among the general public.
In alternate years, the Foundation awards Finland’s most significant visual-art prize – 50,000 euros. The prize goes to an artist in recognition of individual artistic work of outstanding quality.
