The White House is pleased to announce that the first Bank Art Prize 2025 Alina Sokolova was awarded.
Furthermore, the jury decided a first bank recognition prize Zeljka Aleksic to forgive.
The first bank art prize was together with the The white house developed and is within the framework of the First bank sponsoring program – more beautiful! awarded for the tenth time this year. Another partner in implementing the price is one of the Austrian Cultural Forums. This year’s edition is with the Austrian Cultural Forum in Prag realized. The Erste Bank Kunst Prize is endowed with 5,000 euros and enables an exhibition to the White House as well as a one -month stay and another exhibition in the respective host country. The first bank recognition prize is equipped with 2,500 euros.
The jury justifies its decision as follows: “Alina Sokolov Artistic practice takes up the intensity, vulnerability and absurdity of today’s life and it forms a multi -layered, fragmented and yet coherent narrative that moves on the abyss between personal and political. Their expressive paintings develop like a diary and are supplemented by another artistic space, which she developed in collaboration with other artists and which is played with video work and other choreographic forms. Her work documents her experiences as an artist, as a woman, reflects on growing conflicts, political uncertainty and the uncanny presence of the war. Sokolova works with symbolic and surrealistic motifs and navigates through a world in which the basic right to life is repeatedly questioned. Based on the aesthetics of mannerism and charged with symbolic intensity, their work encourages to think about the fragility of peace and the currently visible policy in moments of the crisis. Who takes the right to determine life, and how is this right negotiated, demanded or denied? By asking these questions, Sokolova shows the cruelty of survival and the competitive space between personal memory and collective trauma.
Zeljka Aleksic deals in her artistic practice with the question of which price is to be paid to be able to afford the existence of an artist – – both in its practical importance and in creative. It addresses physical work, the precarity of a constantly expiring residence status but also the power of matriarchal support structures. Conditions under which, like many others, she lives, studies and created art. Marx ‘capital appears not only as a criticism of political economy, but as a human reality, confronted with pressing questions about antiquated ideas of citizenship, alienated work, educational costs and what makes artistic work. At the center of her work is the reality of artistic existence that is prescribed for expression, and the simultaneous struggle for existential security and stability. This tension pervades both the topics that you treat and the framework conditions of your work. Aleksics works are a place that combines personal survival and artistic ability to act, at the same time act of creation and survival strategy. They show how inseparable the pursuit of a meaningful artistic life and the struggle for basic rights, recognition and belonging are connected. “
The solo exhibition by Alina Sokolova, in the White House, opens on September 9th, 2025!
Finalist 2025
Martin Chramosta, Fanni Futterknecht, Max Freund, Silke Grabinger, Josepha Edbauer, Lisa Großkopf, Miriam Hamann, Nicole Less
Jury members
Laura Amann (curator, Vienna)
Ruth Goubran (head of the Erste Bank Sponsoring program, Vienna)
Nevena Janković (block -free collective, management & artistic management, the Weisse Haus, Vienna)
Dr. Denise Quistorp (director, Austrian Kulturforum Prague)
Exhibition opening Alina Sokolova
Datum: 09.09.2025, 7:00 p.m. – 9.09.2025, 10:00 p.m.
Art: Exhibitions
Ort: The white house
To Hegelga 14
1010 Wien
Austria
URL: https://dasweissehaus.at/2025/erste-bank-kunstpreistraegerin-2025-ist-alina-sokolova-der-erste-bank-anerkennungskunstpreis-geht-an-zeljka-aleksic/