We are pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2026 David and Yuko Juda Art Foundation Grant, which awards £50,000 to a living artist, providing meaningful financial support and the freedom to focus on the development of their practice.
The shortlisted artists for 2026 are: Laia Abril / Aziza Kadyri/ Amak Mahmoodian / Niamh O'Malley / Ro Robertson / Soheila Sokhanvari / Olivia Sterling
Established in 2017, the David and Yuko Juda Art Foundation will award its grant for the seventh time in 2026. Each year, an invited curator nominates a shortlist of artists for consideration. This year, the Foundation is honoured to welcome acclaimed author, art historian and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the University of Cambridge, Alyce Mahon, as guest curator.
The shortlisted artists will be presented in an exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art's new gallery at 16 Hanover Square, Mayfair, from 10 - 19 September 2026. This marks the first Foundation exhibition to be held in the gallery's new premises.
The recipient will be selected by a panel comprising the Foundation's trustees - David and Yuko Juda, Nina Fellmann, Rupert Faulkner and Paul Calkin - joined by Andrea Rose (Former Director of Visual Arts, British Council), Jonathan Watkins (former Director of IKON, Birmingham) and Andrew Wilson (art historian, critic and former curator at Tate Britain).
The recipient of the £50,000 grant will be announced at 7pm on 10 September during a reception at the gallery from 6-8pm.
In 2025, as Annely Juda Fine Art relocated to its Hanover Square townhouse, the Foundation made a donation instead to The Mother House Studios, which addresses the shortage of professional studio provision supporting artists through pregnancy, motherhood and parenthood.
Previous recipients and curators of the David and Yuko Juda Art Foundation Grant are:
2024 Alan Vaughan – selected and curated by Peter Doig
2023 Eloise Hawser; along with a special second grant of £10,000 awarded to Lea Andrews – selected and curated by Alison Wilding
2022 Brian Dawn Chalkley – selected and curated by Ingrid Swenson and Andrew Wilson
2021 Amikam Toren; along with a special second grant of £10,000 awarded to Rie Nakajima – selected and curated by Jonathan Watkins
2019 Zineb Sedira- selected and curated by Anthony Reynolds
2018 Kathy Prendergast; along with a special second grant of £10,000 awarded to Imogen Stidworthy – selected and curated by Richard Grayson
2026 SHORTLISTED ARTISTS
Laia Abril (b. 1986)
Abril is a research-based artist, whose work spans photography, text, video and sound to examine the intersections of gender issues, biopolitics and systems of power. Through a politically engaged, process-led practice employing forensic aesthetics and counter-narratives, Abril interrogates dominant histories and the politics of representation, exposing the social and institutional structures that shape lived experience.
For the exhibition, Abril presents a work from her latest project, Endometriosis (2026), featuring seven people living with disabling endometriosis. Through the medium of photography she explores how a condition defined by its resistance to visibility might be represented without reducing it to spectacle or illustration. The installation traces the historical continuity between the pathologisation of women's bodies and the persistent dismissal of pain, revealing how medicine has often functioned as a mechanism of control rather than care in the field of sexual and reproductive health.
Abril is the author of several acclaimed publications, including her ongoing series A History of Misogyny, which includes On Abortion, On Rape and On Mass Hysteria. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is held in collections including Centre Pompidou, Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA, Photo Elysée, Fotomuseum Winterthur and the V&A. She has received the Foam Paul Huf Award (Amsterdam), RPS Hood Medal (London), Aperture Best Book Award (NY/Paris), and Spain's National Photography Award. Abril is represented by Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris and Set Espai d'Art, Valencia.
Aziza Kadyri (b. 1994)
Kadyri is a London-based Uzbek artist whose practice brings together textiles, sculpture, performance and emerging technologies to explore cultural heritage, diasporic identity and alternative mythmaking. Drawing on tools including machine learning, AI, extended reality and interactive technologies, Kadyri creates speculative narratives that preserve memory, resist erasure and reimagine inherited forms of knowledge. She is the co-founder of Oizlar, a grassroots collective of artists and activists from Uzbekistan and its diaspora, rooted in intersectionality and social change.
For the exhibition, Kadyri presents The Drought (2024), a hand-embroidered textile work on soviet linen, described by the artist as an altar to the vanished Aral Sea, alongside a three-part research display comprising two wall panels and a digital work. The works reflect her ongoing interest in the relationship between material culture, embodied memory and technological transformation.
Kadyri represented Uzbekistan at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024 with Don't Miss the Cue. Recent exhibitions include the Bukhara Biennial, the 5th Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art at Zhejiang Art Museum, and solo presentations at Somerset House and Pushkin House, London. She is a medallist of the Art Basel Awards 2026, a finalist for the CIRCA Prize 2025 and a Gold Medal recipient at the 18th International Triennial of Textile. She is represented by eastcontemporary gallery, Milan.
Amak Mahmoodian (b. 1980)
Mahmoodian is a multidisciplinary artist and educator whose work spans photography, text, video, drawing, archives and sound. Originally trained as a research-based photographer in Iran, she has lived in the UK since 2010, unable to return to her home country. Working at the intersection of conceptual image-making and documentary photography, and often working through collaborative projects, Mahmoodian explores themes of gender, identity and displacement, navigating the space between the personal and the political through installations, artists' books and film.
For the exhibition, Mahmoodian presents works from One Hundred and Twenty Minutes (2019–23), which explores exile through dreams with collaborators from fourteen countries, in photographic works, a sketchbook displayed in a vitrine and a poem presented on the gallery wall. 120 minutes is the amount of time we dedicate to dream every night, and the installation reflects the collective nature of memory, identity, and belonging.
Mahmoodian has published two books, Shenasnameh (RRB- ICV Lab, 2016), and Zanjir (RRB, 2019) which was the winner of The Best Photo Text Book award at Rencontres Arles, 2020. Her work is held in the collections of Tate and the British Library, London, and she was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026.
Niamh O'Malley (b. 1975)
O'Malley works across sculpture, film and drawing, creating quietly powerful installations that explore space, perception and our physical relationship to the built and natural environment. Using materials including wood, stone, glass, steel and moving image, her sculptures suggest structures of support, protection and shelter, inviting moments of contemplation and shared, embodied experience.
For the exhibition, O'Malley presents a group of recent sculptures, including two Brackets, Panel (2024) and Glance (2026) which is made from 'gold' glass removed from the Irish Life Centre in Dublin. Together, these carefully balanced forms reflect her ongoing investigation into materiality, scale and the subtle dialogue between object, architecture and viewer.
O'Malley was elected to the Ireland's artistic academy Aosdána, and in 2022 represented Ireland at the 59th Venice Biennale. Her work is included in numerous collections, including The Hugh Lane, Dublin City Gallery, Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Arts Council of Ireland & Galleria Arte Moderna, Turin. She is represented by Vardaxoglou Gallery, London.
Ro Robertson (b. 1984)
Robertson is an artist based at Porthmeor Studios, St Ives, whose practice spans sculpture, drawing, painting and video. Their work often works from drawing to sculpture to explore the boundaries between the human body and its environment, creating abstract forms that examine transformation, materiality and the relationship between physical and emotional landscapes. Their multi-part sculptures work with positive and negative space and the fluidity between both states.
For the exhibition, Robertson presents Constructed Landscape (2026), comprising a three-part abstract steel sculpture installed before a large-scale automatic drawing made at To Moor the Sun in Sancreed, West Cornwall. The works reflect an ongoing dialogue between body, place and process. Robertson's public commissions include Drench at the Sainsbury Centre Sculpture Park, Norwich, and Stone (Butch) at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, as well as participation in Frieze Sculpture 2022. Their work is held in the collections of Arts Council England, the Government Art Collection, Leeds Art Gallery, York Art Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the British Museum, the Sainsbury Centre and The Hepworth Wakefield. They are represented by Maximillian William Gallery, London.
Soheila Sokhanvari (b. 1964)
Sokhanvari is an artist whose practice explores memory, identity and cultural displacement through painting, drawing and installation. Trained initially in biochemistry before turning to fine art, Sokhanvari employs the traditional technique of egg tempera on calf vellum, painstakingly grinding her own pigments to create works that evoke the precision of illuminated manuscripts. Drawing on magic realism, symbolism and allegory, her work addresses political and social histories through metaphor, resisting fixed or authoritarian narratives.
For the exhibition, Sokhanvari presents five intimate portraits painted on vellum- her father Ali-Mohammed Sokhanvari, Iranian actresses Zhaleh Olov, Zari Khoshkam and Farzaneh Taidi, and the last Empress of Iran, Farah Pahlavi. They are drawn from family and promotional photographs but in dialogue with western manuscript illumination and Persian miniature painting and displayed against a backdrop that echoes their luminous surfaces. Together, the works explore portraiture as a site of memory, resilience and cultural identity.
In 2018 Sokhanvari won the Derek Hill Foundation Scholarship at the British School at Rome and her installation Leave to Remain, comprising 35 expired passports stamped by the artist, is currently on view at Tate Britain (2025–27). Her work is held in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria and the Saatchi Gallery Collection. She is represented by Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery, London and Berlin.
Olivia Sterling (b. 1996)
Sterling is a London-based painter whose vividly coloured, tightly composed works examine race, class, gender and social status through scenes of everyday British life. Often set in domestic interiors or public spaces, her paintings combine fragmented bodies, food and familiar cultural references with sharp humour to expose both the subtle and overt manifestations of racism. Recurring motifs -including Victoria sponge and Colin the Caterpillar cakes as well as cheap bottles of booze and sausages, root her work in a distinctly British visual language while questioning the assumptions embedded within it.
For the exhibition, Sterling presents three paintings - French Noises (oh la la) (2024), And I'd do it Again (2025) and Eating Disorders Erecticle Disjunction (2026). They extend her painterly exploration of class, gender and race politics as she makes the familiar subversively comic and strange through the colour palette, close-up framing and frank subject-matter.
Sterling has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at Meyer Riegger, Basel and Berlin, and a residency at the Palazzo Monti in 2024, as well as shows at CCA Goldsmiths, London and East Gallery, Norwich. Her work is collected by FRAC collections and the Walker Art Gallery. She is represented by Meyer Riegger, Basel and Berlin.