Foundwork

TODAY is the last day to enroll in our 2026 Artist Prize Open Call!

Before we close this cycle, we’re highlighting one more of our former honorees. Among three 2020 Short Listed artists, Andrea Heimer is a painter born in Montana and based in Ferndale, Washington. Her practice investigates the subject of loneliness—largely informed by autobiographical stories such as her own adoption—in order to examine how humans experience feeling alone and its connection to how and why we make art. Heimer’s most recent exhibition, “Three Foxes By the Edge of the Field At Twilight”—was on view this past August Connelly Martin Gallery in Sun Valley, ID. 

Pictured here: “A Bear Sighting Was The Most Coveted Sighting Of All, For Its Danger And Hulk, And For Its Rarity. One Night While We Slept In My Grandmother’s Tin Can Trailer, A Bear Got Tangled In The Brush Pit For A Time And We Listened To It Grumble In The Dead Of Night,” 2026; Acrylic and graphite on cradled birch panel.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 28 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 28 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

WE’VE EXTENDED THIS YEAR’S REGISTRATION DEADLINE TO MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28 @ 5:00 PM PT!

This year’s honoree will receive an unrestricted U.S. $10,000 grant, remote studio visits with each of the esteemed jurors, and an interview in our Dialogues program.

Three artists will be named to the 2026 Short List, and each will receive a $1,000 micro-grant in support of their practice.

To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 pm PT, September 25 – 5 pm PT, December 31, 2026.

See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.

The deadline for our 2026 open call is in 2 DAYS!

Over the last few weeks we’ve been highlighting some of our past honorees, and where their practices have taken them recently.

One of our 2020 Short Listed artists, Joiri Minaya, is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist who works in photography, digital media, film, performance, sculpture, textiles, and painting. Minaya’s exhibition “To Hell with Hibiscus”—on view Henry Art Gallery through May 2, 2027—showcases the versatile language of textiles she has developed to critique the making of a global Tropics, a fabricated realm for the “exotic” extending from the Caribbean to the Pacific.

Pictured here: “Shield,” 2022; Archival pigment print. Courtesy of the artist and Praise Shadows. Photo by the artist.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

As the prize countdown nears its close, we’re reintroducing you to a few more of our past honorees, and where their practices have taken them recently.

One of our 2023 Short Listed artists, cliffordprinceking, is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York whose work has been exhibited across the world, as well as commissioned for numerous publications. His solo exhibition “After Heaven”—for which the artist directs his focus to family, place, and landscape in Tucson, Arizona, where he grew up, and nearby Sahuarita on his family’s ranch—opens at MOCA Tucson on October 8.

Pictured here: “to a place that’s only ours,” 2026.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

The registration deadline for our 2026 Foundwork Artist Prize is now just one week away: 5:00 pm PT, September 25

This year’s honoree will receive an unrestricted U.S. $10,000 grant, remote studio visits with each of the esteemed jurors, and an interview in our Dialogues program.

Three artists will be named to the 2026 Short List, and each will receive a $1,000 micro-grant in support of their practice.

To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 pm PT, September 25 – 5 pm PT, December 31, 2026.

See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.

As the prize countdown continues, we’d like to reintroduce you to a few more of our past honorees, and where their practices have taken them in recent years.

One of our 2023 Short Listed artists, Sónia Almeida (Sónia Almeida), is a Lisbon-born artist, working in the Boston area, whose work operates within the realm of expanded painting. Often drawing from systems of communication to explore themes of misinterpretation and cultural fragmentation, she considers how the medium of painting behaves under the digital conditions of a global economy. Her most recent exhibition, “Stages”—which consists of three large-scale installations—is on view at in Williamstown, MA through January 24, 2027.

Pictured here: “Systems,” 2025; laser engraved plywood, ink, metal plates and cables

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

As the prize countdown continues, we’d like to reintroduce you to a few more of our past honorees, and where their practices have taken them in recent years.

Onyeka Igwe (), one of our two 2021 co-awardees, is a London-born and based moving image artist and researcher. Her work is aimed at the question, “how do we live together?”—not to provide a rigid answer as such, but to pull apart the nuances of mutuality and co-existence in our deeply individualized world. 

Igwe’s solo presentation, “No Archive Can Restore this Chorus of (Diasporic) Shame,” was on view this past summer at Vienna Secession, and this fall she will share films at leff (Setpember 21), BIEFF (September 23-30), and (October 17). 

Pictured here: “No Archive Can Restore This (Diasporic) Shame,” installation view at Secession, 2026. Photo: Sophie Pölzl.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

The registration deadline for our 2026 Foundwork Artist Prize is now two weeks away: 5:00 pm PT, September 25

This year’s honoree will receive an unrestricted U.S. $10,000 grant, remote studio visits with each of the esteemed jurors, and an interview in our Dialogues program.

Three artists will be named to the 2026 Short List, and each will receive a $1,000 micro-grant in support of their practice.

To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 pm PT, September 25 – 5 pm PT, December 31, 2026.

See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.

As the prize countdown continues, we’d like to reintroduce you to a few more of our past honorees, and where their practices have taken them in recent years.

One of our two 2021 co-awardees, Kent Chan () is an artist, curator, and filmmaker based in the Netherlands and Singapore. His practice revolves around our encounters with art, fiction, and cinema that form a triumvirate of practices porous in form, content, and context. He holds particular interest in the tropical imaginary, the past and future relationships between heat and art, and contestations to the legacies of modernity as the epistemology par excellence.

Kent Chan is currently artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, where his solo exhibition, “Weather Casting,” opens tomorrow and will be on view through November 15. 

Pictured here: “Weather Casting,” 2025; film still.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]

As our 2026 prize countdown continues, we’d like to reintroduce you to a few more past honorees, as well as where their practices have taken them in recent years.

Our 2023 awardee—Valerie Asiimwe Amani (Valerie Asiimwe Amani)—investigates the lasting consequences of colonialism on the construction of individual and collective identities, examining the traces left by imperial systems in language, representation, and social structures.

Her work pictured here—“Three Bodies,” 2026—was on view at last month as part of “CROSSING NARRATIVES (Diary #08 of Minor Frequencies: The Inner Life of a Nation)” at Collezione Sibilla in the satellite space of the Tanzania Pavilion 2026 at the Venice Biennale.

[The selection period for the 2026 Prize starts on September 25 at 5 PM PT. To be considered, artists must register (if you have not done so already) and maintain a published artist profile on Foundwork, including at least 6 artworks and an artist statement, throughout the 2026 selection period: 5 PM PT, September 25 – 5 PM PT, December 31, 2026. See the Foundwork Artist Prize section in our FAQ and official Rules for full instructions and terms that apply to this year’s award.]