Artist Nnena Kalu has been announced as the winner of this years Turner Prize, the UK’s most prestigious art award.
Her sculptures and drawings, featuring intricate tornado-like shapes and bright colours, earned her the Prize’s recognition, making history as the first artist with a learning disability to be awarded first place.
Kalu is a 52 year old artist, who is autistic and learning disabled with limited verbal communication. Charlotte Hollinshead, Kalu’s studio manager and artistic facilitator who has worked with her for the past 25 years, said: “This is a major, major moment for a lot of people. It’s seismic. It’s broken a very stubborn glass ceiling” whilst on stage at the ceremony.
Receiving the award at the ceremony in Bradford, the UK’s current city of culture, Nnena Kalu also received the £25,000 prize money – a well-deserved recognition of what Hollinshead described as a long and arduous journey. Glasgow-born, and now London-based, it took Nnena Kalu a long time to break into the world of art, despite being a resident artist with Action Space since 1999.
Over the years her work gradually started to gain popularity, and this award is the ultimate prize for a long career of hard work. It also signifies how the art world is starting to evolve, finally ready to accept artists in all their glory – artists that were previously shunned.