“Although I don’t tend to categorise my work as photography, in the traditional sense of the term, it is by all intents and purposes photographic. And photography, historically, has not faired very well when it is forced to compete with other media. So, I was both taken aback and delighted by the news in equal measure. It is of course a huge honor to be granted such a prestigious award. And, moreover, a privilege to know that this funding will contribute directly to the Sovereign Art Foundation’s charitable program, making me a part of something much bigger than this single artistic achievement.
I’m grateful to the Foundation and to the jury for seeing past the surface of three insufficient photographs on the wall. Their recognition affirms the core premise of my project: that in a project about enforced disappearance, the visible is predicated upon a vast field of invisibility and that the collapse of the signifier is the only possible truthful representation of the destruction of and the void left by the signified.”
“Receiving an award dedicated to women means a great deal to me – not just as personal recognition, but as a powerful statement about who deserves a place at the table in the arts.
Over the past 5 years, there has been a troubling rise in the number of artists who are unsure they can continue their professional practice. This uncertainty is even more acute among women artists, particularly mothers, who face an impossible choice: pursue their creative ambitions or raise their children.
When artists in these circumstances can’t afford to stay in the profession, entire creative voices disappear. And when that happens, we as a society, all lose.
I believe that supporting women artists is an investment in the diversity of voices our culture desperately needs. For women like me who balance the creative work with the demands of family life, it’s about recognising that talent doesn’t disappear when we have children. Vision doesn’t diminish. Ambition doesn’t evaporate. What changes is access to time, resources, and opportunities.
In an ideal world, these awards wouldn’t need to exist. But until that world arrives, they matter because they send a crucial message: our work has value, our voices deserve to be heard.
To the Foundation, thank you for understanding that supporting women in the arts it’s essential if we want the full range of human experience reflected in our cultural landscape.”
“I am deeply grateful to everyone who voted and visited the exhibition. This work emerged from the pressure to remain passive in the face of everyday adversity. Seeing how strongly people connected with it reminds me that I am not alone in resisting neutrality – as Rupi Kaur writes, ‘the irony of loneliness is we all feel it at the same time’. Through this public vote, chaos and frustration become pictorial tools, allowing for a few more moments of madness.”
Edgar Martins’s artistic practice is rooted in long-term collaborations with highprofile and restricted organisations including CERN, The European Space Agency, EDP, BMW, the UK Metropolitan Police, amongst others. His work explores complex themes including war, incarceration, migration, urbanism, and technology. The project at hand investigates the death and disappearance of his close friend, photojournalist Anton Hammerl, during the 2011 Libyan war. At its heart, it is guided by a simple premise: how does one tell a story when there is no witness, no testimony, no evidence, no referential subject? This project is more than a mere tribute; however, it portrays a complex story, warped by absences, that talks of the difficulty of documenting, witnessing, and imagining war.
Edgar Martins has received numerous awards including the Sony World Photography Award Photographer of the Year (2023) and International Photography Awards Film Photographer of the Year (2023). His latest publications include Anton’s Hand is Made of Guilt… (2024) and What Photography & Inc. have in Common with an Empty Vase (2022).
Alice Marcelino uses photography to explore how migration, tradition, and identity intersect and evolve across cultures in today’s global society. Drawing from Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, this work explores how colonial ideologies persist within algorithmic systems where Blackness is frequently coded as threatening or deviant. These inherited prejudices are masked as objectivity, amplifying harm through seemingly neutral processes. By converting mugshots into ASCII code, the universal language of computers, Marcelino highlights how individuals are stripped of humanity and reduced to data, offering a critique and a reflection of how race and identity are shaped in the digital age.
Notable exhibitions include Albuns de Familia: Fotografias da diáspora Africana em Portugal, Padrão dos Descobrimentos Lisbon, (2024); Polirritmia, MOVART gallery in collaboration with World African Artist United and MEXTO, Lisbon, (2024); 1-54 Fair, London, (2023); AKAA Art & Design Fair, MOVART gallery, Paris, (2022) and Kitoko – Stories from the Black Diaspora, Galeria Arte de Almada, Portugal, (2021).
Ana Malta translates internal dialogues into visual spaces of interpretation. País das Baunilhas reveals the confusion of an overstimulated mind, dragging the viewer into a spiral of sensory excess. “Rush hour… seconds of madness” exposes the paradox: brief moments of chaos within a culture that demands passivity and neutrality, something associated with the pale taste of vanilla. An unstable Jenga tower disturbs a Twister mat, intertwining emotions in a cuckoo clock marking the erosion of time to the rhythm of tennis balls. A black cat rests ambiguously, between resistance and satisfaction.
Recent exhibitions include Menu, Yiri Arts Gallery, Taiwan, (2025); Art Paris with This Is Not a White Cube, Paris, (2025); Art Madrid Art Fair with Galeria São Mamede, Madrid, (2024); A Ausência do Descanso, Galeria São Mamede, Lisbon, (2023). She was awarded MEXTO Property Investment Acquisition Prize at ARCOlisboa Art Fair, Lisbon, (2025).
