Frieze Los Angeles has awarded its 2026 Impact Prize to artist Napoles Marty, whose work will now be featured in the upcoming fair, scheduled to run February 26–March 1.
The annual award, now in its fifth year, is given to an emerging artist and a nonprofit and comes with a solo booth at Frieze LA as well as a $25,000 prize for the artist.
This year’s iteration of the Impact Prize was awarded in partnership with NXTHVN, the artist residency program in New Haven, Connecticut, that was founded by artist Titus Kaphar and investor Jason Prize.
Marty, who was a 2024–25 fellow at NXTHVN, will work with Diana Nawi, curator of special projects for contemporary art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, on his booth presentation. Nawi was part of a three-member jury that also included collectors Allison K. Berg and Maisha C. Leek to select this year’s winner.
The artist was born in Cuba and is now based between Connecticut and Rhode Island. He works across sculpture and painting, often rendering the human figure in grotesque ways. His work was featured in the 2015 Havana Biennial and the 2018 edition of the Eva International in Ireland.
“I was impressed by the continuity of [Marty’s] visual language across drawing, painting, and sculpture,” Nawi said in a statement. “There is a dynamic expressiveness throughout his practice that conjures an inner world made tangible.”
