Julia Phillips wins 2026 K21 Global Art Award

With the K21 Global Art Award, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen presents the most generously endowed annual prize for younger international contemporary art in Germany. Returning for its fourth edition on October 8, 2026, the award is presented in partnership with the Friends of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and with the support of the Reydan + Roger Weiss Foundation. The €100,000 award recognizes artists in the mid of their career whose distinctive visions and practices are shaping contemporary art today. Through an acquisition for the collection and a presentation at K21, the award also contributes to the ongoing broadening of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen’s collection, bringing diverse artistic perspectives and practices into its galleries. The 2026 nominees are Monira Al Qadiri, biarritzzz, Julia Phillips, Mohammed Z. Rahman, Juliana dos Santos, WangShui, Wong Ping, and Cici Wu. Artist Julia Phillips is the recipient of the 2026 K21 Global Art Award.

Susanne Gaensheimer, Director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen: “I am delighted that, thanks to the generous financial support of the Friends of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and a private donor, we are able to present the K21 Global Art Award for the fourth time. As one of the most highly endowed international prizes for contemporary art, and with its distinctly global approach, the K21 Global Art Award holds a unique place within Germany’s contemporary art scene. At the same time, the award enables us to strengthen the collection with diverse and internationally significant artistic voices, ensuring that a broad range of contemporary perspectives and experiences are represented in the museum. I warmly congratulate Julia Phillips on receiving the K21 Global Art Award 2026.”

The K21 Global Art Award contributes to the programmatic expansion of the Kunst-sammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen’s collection, helping to make it more diverse and global. Linked to a significant new acquisition for the collection, the award is endowed with 100,000 euros. This art award also symbolizes the Friends’ creative and sustainable commitment to the museum. The acquired work will be given to the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen by the Friends on permanent loan.

About the winner
Alongside works on paper and videos, Julia Phillips (b. 1985 in Hamburg) works primarily with ceramics and metal, creating sculptures reminiscent of functional objects. Her works are metaphors for social and psychological experiences, metaphors that are both mechanical and bodily, and that typically focus on experiences of power relations between individuals or between an individual and an institution. Recently, Phillips has turned her focus towards the inside of the body, portraying organs and growths as well as references to the medical environment to challenge perceptions of subject-object relationships within the care industry. 

As part of the K21 Global Art Award, Julia Phillips’s significant and compelling installation Oppressor with Soul, In Treatment & Suppressor with Spirit, In Treatment (2020) enters the collection of Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Julia Phillips was born in Hamburg and lives and works in Chicago. She has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1 in New York, Kunstverein Braunschweig, and the Barbican Arts Centre, London. She was featured in the Berlin Biennial, the New Museum Triennial, the Venice Biennale, and the Whitney Biennial. Her work has been shown at museums including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum Brandhorst in Munich, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Her work is held in numerous public collections including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum MMK für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt a. M., the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art New York. Julia Phillips recently completed her first public artwork commission titled Observer, Observed for the NY High Line, which was shown in second iteration at the Sydney Festival 2026, and published her first monograph titled Energy Exchange with Mousse Publishing, Milan.

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