Huge congratulations to Rene Matić for being shortlisted for the Turner Prize 2025 for their exhibition AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH at CCA Berlin, 8 Nov 2024 – 15 Feb 2025.

Rene Matić was born in Peterborough, England in 1997. They completed a BA in Fine Art at Central St Martins, London in 2020.

Matić works predominantly in photography but their practice also encompasses film, sculpture, textile, sound and writing. Their work explores themes such as pleasure, love and the constructed self through the lens of ‘rudeness’, a concept used by Matić and derived from Rudeboy culture that they describe as a ‘celebration of interruption and in-betweeness’. Matić’s practice often foregrounds subcultures and the symbols within everyday imagery, through which they interrogate wider social dynamics of nationalism, race, gender, and class.

Matić is nominated for AS OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH at CCA Berlin (8 November 2024 – 15 February 2025). Their first institutional solo exhibition in Germany, the presentation featured newly produced photographs, installations and a sound piece across several rooms. ‘Restoration’ (2022-ongoing) comprises a growing collection of antique Black dolls salvaged by the artist; their worn appearance reflecting on notions of hurt, abandonment and care. The photo series ‘Feelings Wheel’ (2022-ongoing) and sound installation 365 (2024) bring together overlapping imagery and sounds with references including protest, intimate relationships and popular music that together reflect on the fractured realities we live in. Within a context of rising global right-wing populism, propaganda and political hypocrisy, together the exhibition explores how people hold on to one another, care for each other, and learn to live with vulnerability—despite, or in defiance of, so-called contemporary ‘truths’.

More about the exhibition.
 

The Turner Prize is one of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts. It aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art.

The prize is awarded each year to a British artist, and is named in honour of the radical painter JMW Turner. In the year that the UK celebrates the 250th anniversary of Turner’s birth, the Turner Prize is heading to Bradford.

The shortlisted artists – Nnena Kalu, Rene Matić, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa – were announced on 23 April 2025, 250 years to the day since the birth of Turner. Their work will feature in the annual Turner Prize exhibition, which takes place at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery. The winner will be announced in Bradford on 9 December 2025.

More about the Turner Prize.