Jesse Darling Wins Turner Prize, UK’s Top Art Award

Jesse Darling, a Berlin-based artist known for sculptures that stand in for unstable bodies, has won the Turner Prize, the UK’s top art award. He will now receive £25,000, or around $31,500.

This is the 40th time that the Turner Prize has been given out, with past winners including Anish Kapoor, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rachel Whiteread, Lubaina Himid, and many more.

Many of Darling’s works feature everyday objects arranged to suggest bodies with elongated legs and bent arms. Darling has said they design their sculptures so that they may eventually alter or even collapse.

Medical equipment and refuse have been utilized frequently in these sculptures, a number of which explore the means by which individuals can support themselves and each other. Some of these works had appeared at Modern Art Oxford in a 2022 solo show that earned Darling their Turner Prize nomination.

“Vulnerability is a given in everybody,” Darling once told Ocula. “It’s what makes us alive. It’s not that vulnerability is a strength per se, but our physical fragility as organisms and propensity to suffer in love, conflict, under structural violence, and our animal need for nourishment and warmth are what we share.”

The prize’s announcement read, “The jury commended his use of materials and commonplace objects like concrete, welded barriers, hazard tape, office files and net curtains, to convey a familiar yet delirious world. Invoking societal breakdown, his presentation unsettles perceived notions of labour, class, Britishness and power.”

Also nominated this year were Ghislaine Leung, Rory Pilgrim, and Barbara Walker.