In Artsy’s annual roundup of the Most Influential Artists of 2025, two African creatives—Nnena Kalu and Otobong Nkanga—stood out as the only artists of African descent included on a list otherwise dominated by global figures such as Amy Sherald, Kerry James Marshall, Anne Imhof, Beeple, Ayoung Kim, and Tyler Mitchell, among others shaping the global art discourse this year.
This recognition underscores not just their rising star in the art world but also the distinctive practices that have driven their influence amid a volatile cultural landscape marked by debates over AI adoption, funding cuts, and artistic autonomy.
Nnena Kalu: Breaking Barriers with Expressive Materiality
British artist Nnena Kalu made headlines in 2025 by becoming the first neurodivergent artist to win the prestigious Turner Prize, one of the UK’s foremost contemporary art awards. Her selection—over fellow nominees including Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami, and Zadie Xa—was celebrated both for its artistic merit and its broader cultural impact.
Kalu’s sculptural and drawing practice is defined by an intuitive, visceral language that defies easy categorization. Working with repurposed materials like VHS tape, rope, fabric, discarded paper and found objects, she creates cocoon-like sculptural forms whose rhythmic wrappings and densely layered surfaces vibrate with expressive force. These hanging sculptures, produced through repetitive gestures of binding and accumulation, suggest organic systems—nests, cocoons, vortexes—that seem to move between abstraction and life itself.
Critics and jurors noted that her work’s strength lies in how gesture and materiality converge to convey presence and emotion, whether in large two-dimensional drawings of pulsing lines or monumental sculptural installations that occupy space like bodies.
Beyond formal innovation, Kalu’s visibility has become a symbolic milestone for disability representation in the arts, expanding conversations around who gets to be seen and heard in major institutional arenas.
Otobong Nkanga: Dialogues Between Ecology, Memory, and Form
For Nigerian-Belgian artist Otobong Nkanga, influence in 2025 was anchored not just in artistic production but in how her work reframes ecological and social consciousness. Nkanga’s practice intertwines materials such as soil, stone, glass, fibre, scent, and sound to explore landscapes as repositories of human history—particularly regarding extraction, migration, and agriculture.
A major highlight was her MoMA exhibition “Cadence”, where Nkanga transformed the museum’s atrium into an immersive environment. Sculptures, a monumental woven tapestry, and layered soundscapes—including recordings of deep breathing—created a visceral ecosystem that acted as both metaphor and memorial for ongoing ecological disruptions.
Her momentum continued with the Nasher Prize—one of the world’s most prestigious awards for sculptors—affirming her status as a critical voice in contemporary sculpture and installation. Additionally, her exhibition Each Seed a Body at the Nasher Sculpture Center invited audiences into a sensory encounter with plants and spices, foregrounding the embodied experience of ecological interdependence.
Nkanga’s work consistently pushes beyond conventional sculpture: by merging visual form with scent and sound, she amplifies how memory, landscape, and human labor are interconnected, inviting viewers into reflective and communal experience.
Broader Impact
Together, Kalu and Nkanga exemplify how contemporary artists from African backgrounds are shaping global art narratives—not merely through visibility but through practices that challenge material norms, foreground politics of inclusion and environment, and redefine the stakes of artistic influence in 2025. Their presence on Artsy’s list amid artists from diverse geographies and disciplines speaks to an art world gradually expanding its lens toward practices that confront urgency, resist easy interpretation, and broaden aesthetic possibility.
