Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice 2025–27

The Vera List Center for Art and Politics is honored to announce Brazilian artist, educator, and researcher Rosana Paulino as the recipient of the 2025–27 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice. Coinciding with the Vera List Center’s two-year research cycle Matter of Intelligence, Paulino is awarded the prize for the significance and impact of her 2016 artist book ¿História Natural?.

The selection of Paulino was made unanimously in August 2025 following a months-long review process by a jury chaired by Chus Martínez with members Tony Albert, Sennay Ghebreab, Carin Kuoni, and Gabi Ngcobo. In their jury citation, they comment:

“Paulino redefines intelligence as dynamic, relational, and liberatory … In her hands, materials are not inert supports but active participants—textiles, paper, and thread become epistemic tools, carriers of memory, and agents in the work of unlearning and reimagining. … [S]he affirms that intelligence is not bound by data or logic, but is held in lived experience, intergenerational wisdom, and the enduring ties between body, land, and story.”

At once critique and proposition, Paulino’s book ¿História Natural? challenges the scientific, religious, and political ideologies that were once weaponized to legitimize colonialism and slavery across Africa and South America. Paulino pairs images of Brazilian flora and fauna, once destined for European study, with colonial photographs of Black women and Indigenous peoples, exposing how taxonomy and racial hierarchy worked hand in hand to reduce non-white lives to specimens, while also advancing a new mode of knowledge—one that rejects imperialist logics, continued erasure, and literal and physical marginalization of Black and Indigenous Brazilians and celebrates embodied Black intelligence.

As the Prize recipient, Paulino will have a solo exhibition at The New School in October 2026 as part of the Vera List Center Forum. The four Prize finalists are also honored and appointed as 2025–2027 Jane Lombard Fellows. They are ArTree Nepal for Tikā Chedna Angana; Stephanie Dinkins for Conversations with Bina48; Jason Edward Lewis for Abundant Intelligences; and Jenna Sutela for nimiia cétiï. Alongside Paulino’s exhibition, the VLC Forum 2026 will feature presentations by the Jane Lombard Fellows and a newly published catalogue.

About the Jane Lombard Prize
Endowed through a gift from VLC Board member Jane Lombard, the Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice is international in scope and honors outstanding achievements in art and politics, recognizing an experienced artist or group of artists for a project that engages with political themes and advances social justice in profound and visionary ways. The Prize carries a cash award of US$25,000 and a limited edition artwork commissioned from Yoko Ono.

Previous recipients include artist Theaster Gates for Dorchester Projects (2012–2014), Syrian film collective Abounaddara (2014–2016), Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves (2016–2018), Pan-African collective Chimurenga (2018–2020), Indian interdisciplinary practitioner Avni Sethi (2020–2022), and Brisbane-based urban Aboriginal collective proppaNOW (2022–2024).

About Rosana Paulino
Rosana Paulino is a Brazilian artist and curator whose work explores themes of gender, colonialism, and ancestry. She is especially interested in probing the lasting legacies of slavery in Brazil, often by interrogating the image of the Black woman in Brazilian culture. She studied printmaking and earned a PhD from the Comunidades e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, becoming the first Afro-Brazilian woman to earn a PhD in visual arts. Her recent exhibitions are Diálogos do Dia e da Noite, Mendes Wood DM, New York (2025); Novas Raízes, Casa Museu Eva Klabin, Rio de Janeiro (2024); and Amefricana, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (2024). Her works are held in museums such as the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; the Museo Afro Brasil; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; MALBA, Buenos Aires; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. 

Read the full announcement on the VLC website. For press inquiries, please contact Sarah Brown McLeod, Department PR, sarah@department-pr.com.