Lebanese Canadian artist Joyce Joumaa and London-based artist Rhea Dillon have been awarded the 2025 Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel. The award winners will receive CHF 30,000 ($36,700), and their works will be donated to European museums MMK Frankfurt and MUDAM Luxembourg.
Given out annually in the Statements section of Art Basel’s Swiss fair, the Baloise Art Prize recognizes two emerging artists showing solo presentations. This year’s jury included Karola Kraus, director of mumok Vienna; Bettina Steinbrügge, director of MUDAM; Susanne Pfeffer, director of MMK Frankfurt; Susanne Titz, director of the Museum Abteiberg in Germany; and Swiss art collector Uli Sigg.
Joumaa, who was included in the 2024 Venice Biennale, received the prize for Periodic Sights (2025). The work is an installation of repurposed fuse boxes containing photographs from Beirut and Tripoli. The light boxes simulate Lebanon’s average household electricity access—often limited to two hours daily—highlighting the social impact of infrastructural collapse and war.
Born in 1998, Joumaa lives between Beirut and Amsterdam. She is exhibiting at Art Basel with Montreal’s Eli Kerr Gallery..
“The recognition from the Baloise Prize has already begun to open doors for Joyce, and the gallery is honored to be included in the legacy of the outstanding artists and galleries that received the award,” gallerist Eli Kerr told Artsy.
Dillon was recognized for her “Leaning Figures” series (2025), comprising wall-mounted sculptures that incorporate resin-cast crystal plates stuck to molasses and Jamaican soil. These works are held in boxes made of Sapele mahohany wood, which was transported as ballast in slave ships, a symbolic nod to the material traces of colonialism.
The British artist, born in 1996, is showing with London’s Soft Opening gallery—whose stand won the prize for the second year in a row. Dillon’s practice, which spans poetry, filmmaking, sculpture, and painting, frequently explores materials that symbolize her Caribbean and British identities.
Past winners of the Baloise prize include now widely recognized names. These include British German artist Tino Sehgal, South Korean sculptor Haegue Yang, and the late multidisciplinary artist Suki Seokyeong Kang, who passed away earlier this year
