Mohamed Bourouissa has been awarded the Mario Merz Prize 2025 in the art category.
The Mario Merz Prize, now in its fifth edition, is the only international prize to recognise talents in art and music. Alongside Bourouissa, the awardee in the music category this year is Natalia Domíngyez Rangel.
Each recipient was selected from a shortlist by a jury of professionals in their respective fields. For the art prize, Bourouissa was chosen by a jury made up of Caroline Bourgeois, the current curator of the Pinault Collection in Paris; Manuel Borja-Villel, an author and independent curator; Massimiliano Gioni, the artistic director of the New Museum in New York and of the Fondazione Trussardi in Milan, and Beatriz Merz.
Bourouissa, who is of Algerian descent and is based in Paris, was awarded the Merz Prize based on a submission comprised of a film work that delves into the subject of violence by the police, navigating topics of hierarchy at the state level, the idea of control, as well as the appropriation of people’s bodies. As part of the Merz Prize, the artist will be supported in conceiving a commissioned and site-specific exhibition to be showcased at the Fondazione Merz in 2027.
The artist works primarily in video and photography to illuminate those at the fringes of society, giving them a space to exist while depicting them in a new light, in contrast with today’s media. Bourouissa has previously exhibited at the Fondazione MAST in Bologna, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, LaM – Lille Métropole Musée d’art modern in Lille, Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, and also has work placed in the collections of MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Finnish Museum of Photography, among others.
The Merz Prize, an initiative of the Fondazione Merz, named after Mario and Marisa Merz, was established in Turin in 2005 as a biannual art and music prize. It was conceived with the aim of finding and providing a platform for artists and composers, particularly those with an international outlook who are aware of the social issues of the time, while remaining open-minded and forward-thinking in their approach.
Previous recipients of the Mario Merz Prize include Wael Shawky, Petrit Halilaj, Bertille Bak and Yto Barrada in the art section, while Cyrill Schürch, Geoffrey Gordon, Jay Schwartz and Füsun Köksal have been awarded for the music section.
