Inside the 2025 Turner Prize Exhibition in Bradford – Review

For the first time, the Turner Prize comes to Cartwright Hall in Bradford, taking over the entire gallery, with each shortlisted artist given a dedicated space. On the ground floor, Rene Matić and Zadie Xa present contrasting but immersive installations, while upstairs, Nnena Kalu and Mohammed Sami showcase large-scale works that push the boundaries of material, memory and form. Together, these four distinct practices reflect the urgency, complexity, and imagination of contemporary art today.

Rene Matić

The first thing you notice in Matić’s installation is a cream wall with a glass frame leaning against it. Inside, a small photograph peers from the outside into what appears to be a pub. An England flag hangs in the window above a sign reading “private party”. It immediately suggests exclusion, nationalism and political hypocrisy. 

On the reverse of the wall, a collection of salvaged Black dolls confronts the viewer. Broken and disassembled, their gazes are unsettling. But over time, discomfort gives way to tenderness. Carefully arranged, nurtured even, by Matić, the dolls form a kind of chosen family, evoking care for those left behind. 

Opposite, a large white flag reads “No place” on one side and “for violence” on the other.  Quoting political responses to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in July 2024, the phrase is disrupted by audio from pro-Palestinian protests listing Gaza’s daily death tolls. The contrast is stark. Matić exposes the contradiction between political rhetoric and violent state action. She questions who gets to define violence, and whose pain is acknowledged.

Surrounding the flag is ‘Feelings Wheel’, a photographic series layering images from protests, parties, and domestic life. Intimate and unfiltered moments, from insulin injections to a couple quietly dancing, blend with the audio of Rihanna’s ‘Lift Me Up’. The song, with its themes of grief and healing, perfectly echoes how these images celebrate everyday resilience, togetherness and the power of community. The same glass frame from the opening image now holds these layered, shared moments. What began as distant becomes collective. What was isolated now belongs.

Zadie Xa

Across the hall, Xa’s installation offers a vibrant contrast. The walls shift from deep ocean blue to fiery red and plum-toned purple, evoking the cyclical rhythm of sun and moon. This gradient blurs sea and sky, immersing the viewer in a dreamlike world. 

Known for imagining alternate realms, Xa heightens this atmosphere with a stunning reflective floor that mirrors the vivid colours, artworks, and even visitors. Drawing on her Korean-Canadian heritage and Korean shamanism, she suspends the viewer between a reality above and below; a spiritual realm between earth and ocean. Prompting questions about interspecies communication, it asks what the sea’s inhabitants, living or dead, might say if they could speak. Sound plays a central role. Seashells in each corner emit whale calls, waves, gulls, and fragments of a traditional Korean exorcism dance, suggesting dialogue across time and species.

At the centre, hundreds of hanging shamanic bells swirl into the shape of a shell. Titled ‘Ghost’, the sculpture feels partly intangible. Both a shell and not a shell, a form conjured more from memory or echo than from solid matter. 

Large wall paintings evoke Korean bojagi textiles, using frayed panels that resemble the ceremonial fabrics. Turtles, whales, and folkloric symbols shimmer and shift as you look, their rainbow colours revealing new details over time. Xa’s installation is a sensory space which invites quiet contemplation as oceanic life, ancestral knowledge, and cultural memory intertwine.

Mohammed Sami

Upstairs, Sami’s paintings at first resemble a conventional gallery, but his work is anything but. Drawing on earlier work exhibited at Blenheim Palace, an 18th century monument to military triumphs, Sami instead reflects on the causes and consequences of conflict.

The standout piece is ‘Massacre,’ a vast canvas where hoofprints mark sandy ground and wilted sunflowers scatter a cornfield. Sunflowers, typically warm and joyful, are crushed beneath the bobbled surface of the hoofprints, marking something terrible having occurred. The title implies a violent crime, but are the hoofprints from escape or pursuit? The ambiguity of who is the victim, and who is the perpetrator is chilling. 

In ‘Hiroshima Mon Amour’, vibrant blues and greens depict a beautiful seascape. At its centre, the water balloons downward, disturbed by an unseen force that could be wind, light, or, as the title suggests, something more catastrophic. Beneath the surface, faint outlines of clothing appear like ghostly impressions. ‘The Hunters Return’ shows a military laser cutting through a dust storm, though it’s unclear who is being hunted. In ‘Grinder,’ an empty dining table eerily sits under the shadow of a ceiling fan. ‘On Air’ illustrates a deep red lightbulb glowing in a near-black canvas, suggesting either propaganda’s explosive power, or the fiery embers of resistance.

Sami resists clear interpretation. His work explores memory, trauma, and absence, reminding us that in conflict certainty always dissolves into haunting ambiguity.

Nnena Kula

Finally, Kalu’s space bursts with colour and texture. Her large, hanging sculptures, built around looping or tubular structures, are wrapped in layers of repurposed materials. Colourful paper, reflective gold film, glinting video tape, and glittery textiles build layers that catch the light and draw the eye. These vibrant, tangled bundles resemble cocoons or nests, playful, tactile, and strikingly modern against the backdrop of the gallery’s old wooden walls.

Around them, drawings made from swirling, overlapping lines resemble vortexes of movement. These pieces, like the sculptures, are bright and energetic, visual bursts of movement that symbolise a release of pent-up creative energy. Drawn on parchment-like paper and pinned directly to wooden boards, they feel spontaneous and celebratory, as if proudly displayed in the moment of their making.

Though the sculptures and drawings may appear chaotic at first glance, each piece reveals a careful, almost obsessive attention to detail. They are exuberant, intricate, and deeply joyful. Art made for the pure pleasure of making.

This year’s exhibition doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, it invites us into spaces of ambiguity and transformation. Here, absence speaks as loudly as presence, and discarded materials or rituals gain new power. The Turner Prize often sparks debate about what art should be. Here, it reminds us what art can be: a tool for care, for questioning, for witnessing, and sometimes, simply for joy. 

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The Turner Prize exhibition will be on display at Cartwright Hall until 22nd Feb 2026. For more information you can visit https://bradford2025.co.uk/programme/turner-prize-2025/.