Sergio Fontanella (CU)
Sergio Fontanella is a Cuban art historian, cultural manager and curator based in the United States. He currently serves as Director of Operations & Collections at the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO), where he has played a pivotal role in the development and execution of the foundation’s core programs, including the Grants & Commissions Program, traveling exhibitions, critical publications and the CIFO–Ars Electronica Awards, a pioneering initiative supporting Latin American artists who work at the intersection of art, technology, and global social issues. Before joining CIFO, Fontanella taught courses on contemporary art at the University of Havana. His academic and curatorial work focuses on contemporary Latin American art, with a strong interest in the political and social dimensions of artistic practice. Fontanella has curated several exhibitions, including Critical Landscapes at the MCA Denver and Dialogues at MARCO, Monterrey.
Marita Muukkonen (FI) and Ivor Stodolsky (FR/US)
Marita Muukkonen and Ivor Stodolsky (in alternating order) founded and direct Perpetuum Mobilε (PM) which runs Ecologists at Risk (ER) and Artists at Risk (AR). Curatorial projects include: Alliances for Art at Risk (ZKM), Risk and Rebellion, AR Pavilion (4 iterations incl. biennials), Pluriversity, School of the Displaced (Kyiv Biennial), Re-Aligned (10), Perpetual Romani Pavilion (Venice, Berlin, Moderna Museet), Arts Assembly (Manifesta, CAFA, Beaux Arts, +5); Raw, Cooked, Packaged (Kiasma).
Simon Mraz (AT)
Simon Mraz is an exhibition maker and art historian. From 2009 to 2020 he served as director of the Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow. Simon Mraz´s working focus is an artistic exploration of diverse cultural layers of Russia and the interaction with independent Russian creatives. He has initiated, organized and curated a series of art projects involving Russian and international artists in locations across Russia that over years were counted among the internationally most successful contemporary art projects created in Russia. 2021 Simon Mraz was hired by the Austrian Foreign Ministry with the task to develop and implement innovative formats for an international Austrian cultural policy at the Austrian foreign ministry in the field of contemporary art. In March 2022 he co-founded the leading Austrian program supporting Ukrainian artists in Austria – “Office Ukraine – Shelter for Ukrainian Artists” and together with Ars Electronica the international program “State of the Art(ist)” dedicated to artists at risk from around the world.
Christl Baur (DE)
Christl Baur is the director of the Ars Electronica Festival, where she leads as an interdisciplinary researcher specializing in the convergence of art and science. With a diverse academic background encompassing art history, cultural management, and natural sciences, her work revolves around the fusion of aesthetic and social practices that challenge established norms. She has curated and co-produced a wide range of exhibitions and performances, notably including the exhibition “40 Years of Humanizing Technology – Art, Technology, and Society” in collaboration with CAFA and the Design Society in Shenzhen, China. Baur’s expertise extends to various fields, including video art, new media technologies, computer art, biotechnology, and interactive art. Her research endeavors explore the interplay between art and science, constantly pushing the boundaries of social, political, and economic protocols.
Jury Statement 2025
We are living in a time of rupture, emergence, and collapse.
The ground is shifting beneath our feet—politically, ecologically, socially. Systems are breaking down, and new movements rising. This simultaneity—of upheaval (Umbruch), uprising (Aufbruch), and breakdown (Abbruch)—defines the global condition of 2025. Amid multiple crises, the world is re-arming at a historically alarming rate. Investment in military infrastructure, surveillance, and weaponized borders is soaring while peace processes falter, civic freedoms are being eroded, and the scale and frequency of ecological disasters are accelerating. From Gaza to Sudan to Goma, from Ukraine to Myanmar, intolerance and war has become a permanent fixture, not a last resort.And yet, in the middle of this fractured juncture, art insists on life.
This year, the State of the ART(ist) Award received an extraordinary 506 submissions from 76 countries. The response reflects the growing urgency—and the unyielding determination—of artists to claim spaces in the global conversation. We were struck by the breadth and intensity of the works submitted. We particularly welcomed a new wealth of submissions from across the African continent, showing great talent and humor, and illuminating structural injustices born of colonial legacies, conflict and ecological degradation. A quarter of submissions came from individuals with diverse and intersectional identities, and the overall gender distribution was almost balanced.
The jury encountered works shaped by displacement, censorship, war, and climate collapse, but also courage, solidarity, and imagination. Artists shared not only stories of survival, but radical acts of world-building—developing communal tools, reviving ancestral knowledge, creating safe digital zones, and staging acts of protest that cannot be erased. They reminded us that in many places, to make art is to take great risks.
Although risk was a criteria of eligibility, our task as jurors was to center artistic excellence, rather than biography. And yet, the reality of risk was ever-present. Many submissions were created under surveillance, in exile, or in fragile, rapidly shifting conditions. What we encountered was not merely artwork about danger—it was often art despite of it.
The State of the ART(ist) Initiative stands firmly for freedom of expression and the autonomy of artistic thought. It refuses the logic of collective blame or political scapegoating. The artists selected here are not the agents of governments or systems—they are critical observers, activists, visionaries, and truth-tellers in their own right.
To every artist who shared their work with us, please accept our words of sincere appreciation. Thank you. You have not only given us insight into this turbulent moment, but shown us how resistance, mourning, and dreaming can coexist.
Your voices matter. Your art matters.
Sergio Fontanella, Marita Muukkonen, Ivor Stodolsky, Simon Mraz, Christl Baur
Advisors
- Said Ahmed Mohamed Alhassan (SD)
- Leila Samari, Maryam Sehhat (IR)
- Vardit Goldner (IL)
- Kam Seng Aung (li li k.s.a) (MM)
- Lai Lai Natalie Lo (HK)
- Farah Salka (LB)
- Ruthia Jenrbekova (KZ)
- Saddam Jumaily (IQ)
- Indu Antony (IN)
- Rafiul Alom Rahman, Rachita Sai Barak, Maniza Khalid (IN)
- Azu Nwagbogu (NG)
- Nina Bulgakova, Anastasiia Mostova, Kateryna Zhuravlova (UA)
- Margarethe Makovec (AT)
- Eduardo Cachucho (ZA)
- Julie Trebault (US)