Home, belonging, displacement, community: Artes Mundi exhibitions open across Wales – The Art Newspaper

The six international artists shortlisted for the UK’s biggest contemporary art prize open exhibitions in venues across Wales today. Themes of home, belonging, displacement and community come to the fore in the 11th edition of Artes Mundi, which invites artists to address the human condition in their bid for the £40,000 prize.

The multi-venue format introduced for the award’s 10th edition continues to evolve this year. A group show at the National Museum Cardiff complements in-depth solo presentations at four partner venues: Mostyn, a public art gallery in Llandudno; Aberystwyth Arts Centre; Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea and Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff.

At Mostyn, the artist Jumana Emil Abboud connects the wells and springs of her childhood in Palestine to the history of the north Wales coast, where they resonate afresh in a town famous as a Victorian watering place. Cast wax objects, writing, embroidery, drawing and performance develop through her workshops with local communities.

“I’ve introduced the workshop participants to the springs of Palestine, so they become custodians of these stories,” she says. “And I will do the same with the stories from Wales.”

Elsewhere at the same venue, Peruvian Antonio Paucar is similarly concerned with the traditions and rituals that bind people and places, evoking his Andean heritage through performances and sculpture, often in the landscape. Made from alpaca wool, his handwoven sculptures echo the role of wool in Welsh craft practice.

“It’s about trying to create roots”, explains Artes Mundi director, Nigel Prince. “We’re seeking to create meaning at a very local level for the works that are on display, to elaborate and open out thematic connections. The local speaks to the international, the international speaks to the local.”

At first-time partner venue Aberystwyth Arts Centre, the Zambian artist Anawana Haloba and the Burmese artist Sawangwongse Yawnghwe both use family histories to explore displacement and colonial interference in their home countries. Haloba’s sculptural installation stages an experimental opera, which includes her father’s voice among others, in “a loud song of resistance”.

Born into Burma’s royal family but exiled since childhood, to Yawnghwe his recreations of family photographs, in oil paintings embedded within fields of abstract geometric patterns, represent a forever unknowable aspect of himself. “[The works] represent the impossibility of reconciliation of my family history,” he explains.

Meaning is fragmented and obscured again in the word-based practice of Californian Kameelah Janan Rasheed, in which texts are the everyday carriers of Black experiences and disputed histories. Her installation at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery immerses viewers in an evolving body of provocative, humorous, angry words.

Finally, at Chapter Art Centre, materials carry hidden histories in Sancintya Mohini Simpson’s presentation. The artist uses sugar cane, the cause of her ancestors’ forced migration from India to South Africa, as a pigment in work which navigates the complexities of migration, memory, and trauma.

The winner of the 11th edition of Artes Mundi will be announced on 15 January 2026.

• Artes Mundi 11, National Museum Cardiff, until 1 March 2026
• Artes Mundi 11: Antonio Paucar and Artes Mundi 11: Jumana Emil Abboud, Mostyn, Llandudno, until 21 February 2026
• Artes Mundi 11: Anawana Haloba and Artes Mundi 11: Sawangwongse Yawnghw, Aberystwyth Arts Centre, until 1 March 2026
• Artes Mundi 11: Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, until 1 March 2026
• Artes Mundi 11: Sancintya Mohini Simpson, Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff, until 1 March 2026