Oskar Kokoschka Prize 2026 goes to Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl

"Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl playfully conceive opulent ‘spaces of desire’ that intertwine painting, film, design, language, performance, and spatial references. Although both artists have strong, independent oeuvres, the jury honors their work as a duo as a multi-layered artistic practice that, through the interrelationship of their works, enables a precise performative further development of conceptual art, painting, and installation. The inspiring thematization of queer-feminist and trans* body discourses, which is always visible in their artistic works, makes direct, sometimes explicit references to the examination of gender identity and sexuality in modernity, as it also characterizes the work of Oskar Kokoschka," the jury explained.

Jakob Lena Knebl studied fashion with Raf Simons at the University of Applied Arts Vienna and textual sculpture with Heimo Zobernig at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Today, she is a professor and head of the Department of Transmedia Art and the Institute for Fine and Media Art at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Her works have recently been on display at mumok, the Lentos Museum in Linz, and the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt.
Ashley Hans Scheirl studied in Vienna and London before developing an extensive body of work in the fields of film, performance, sound, and painting. A major exhibition of Ashley Hans Scheirl's work, entitled In & Out of Painting*, is on display at Belvedere 21 until February 1, 2026.
Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl jointly represented Austria at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and have had other major joint exhibitions, for example at the Lyon Biennale (2019/20), the Kunsthaus Bregenz (2020/21), and most recently at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023/24).

The Oskar Kokoschka Prize is one of the most important prizes for visual arts in Austria. It is awarded every two years by a ten-member jury chaired by the rector of the University of Applied Arts Vienna, is endowed with €20,000, and has been sponsored by the Federal Ministry for Women, Science, and Research since 1980. This prize is awarded to national or international artists for outstanding achievements in the field of fine arts and, according to its statutes, is to be presented on the birthday of its namesake, Oskar Kokoschka. The prize will be presented to Jakob Lena Knebl and Ashley Hans Scheirl on February 26, 2026, at the University of Applied Arts Vienna by Federal Minister Eva-Maria Holzleitner.

The first Oskar Kokoschka Prize was awarded to Hans Hartung in 1981. Since then, it has been awarded to Mario Merz, Gerhard Richter, Siegfried Anzinger, artists from Gugging, Agnes Martin, Jannis Kounellis, John Baldessari, Maria Lassnig, Valie Export, Ilya Kabakov, Günter Brus, Martha Rosler, William Kentridge, Raymond Pettibon, Yoko Ono, Peter Weibel, Andrea Fraser, Martha Jungwirth, Monica Bonvicini, Lawrence Weiner, and most recently Miriam Cahn in 2024.

For the first and only time, the Miriam Cahn Scholarship will be awarded alongside the Oskar Kokoschka Prize. The Swiss artist, who was awarded the Oskar Kokoschka Prize in 2024, donated her prize money to a scholarship that will enable a visual artist who has just completed her training to pursue her artistic activities for one year. From three alumni nominated by the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts Vienna from the 2024/25 academic year, the jury selected Natalia Gurova, an artist whose practice moves at the intersection of fiction, history, and social structures. She deals with spaces and their social dimensions, addressing issues of migration, queer identities, and memory politics. In her work with wood, ceramics, metal, text, and found materials, she explores processes of fragmentation, reconstruction, and recontextualization.

Natalia Gurova was born in Belarus and has lived in Austria since 2014. She first studied site-specific art at the University of Applied Arts and then art and space | object at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She received the Academy's Award of Recognition in 2025 for her diploma project. Her works have been exhibited at Vienna Art Week, Vienna Design Week, the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, the Michaela Stock Gallery, Belvedere 21, and musa (Wien Museum), among others.