Ars Fennica 2025 Prize won by Roland Persson

Swedish Visual Artist Roland Persson has been chosen as the winner of the Ars Fennica 2025 Prize. The winner was chosen by internationally renowned curator and museum director Mami Kataoka, director of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the international art expert for the Ars Fennica 2025 Prize.

The winner was announced publicly at an event on Tuesday 10 February 2026 at HAM Helsinki Art Museum. The winner of the Ars Fennica 2025 Visitor's Choice title  – Finnish Visual Artist Hanna Vihriälä – was also announced at the event. More than 25,000 votes were cast by members of the public.

Ars Fennica is a contemporary art prize awarded every two years and one of the largest in the Nordic countries. The 50,000 euro prize is awarded by the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation – ARS FENNICA sr. It is presented in recognition of outstanding artistic achievement and distinctive creative vision and is open to Finnish, Nordic, and Baltic artists.

The nominees for the Ars Fennica 2025 Prize were Ragna Bley, Roland Persson, Jani Ruscica and Hanna Vihriälä. An exhibition featuring works by all the nominees is open at HAM Helsinki Art Museum until 29 March 2026.

Curated by HAM's Curator Heli Harni, the exhibition has been realised in collaboration between HAM Helsinki Art Museum and the Henna and Pertti Niemistö Art Foundation. The exhibition has received support from the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Statement from the art expert Mami Kataoka

The Ars Fennica 2025 exhibition reveals how each artist grasps the meaning of life and existence in the Nordic region—the helplessness and powerlessness within an uncertain world—and how they encapsulate and express these delicate emotions within their artworks. In particular, the ongoing war in neighboring countries separated by a long border is imagined to awaken, whether consciously or unconsciously, a sense of tension and defensive instinct.

Within this context, I would like to award Ars Fennica 2025 to Roland Persson. He manipulates the material of silicone, summoning back into the real world what has been transformed from reality into the unconscious or dream world. Or he projects the world seen from the perspective of plants and animals onto human society. There, while politically confronting the serious and extremely entangled complex world situation, Persson transforms them through his unique poetry into objects that contain ambiguity. Silicone, a material that faithfully reproduces reality, becomes charged with multi-layered meanings during the process of transformation and reconstruction. They compel us to ask whether the horse lying on the piano seeks in music something lost through battle, or whether the music is also dead. The horse's head supported by timber also suggests the ambiguous status of its life. The Victoria amazonica, with its complex structure and sense of scale, covers furniture as if nature were eroding human living space, and here too the furniture barely stands, braced with wood. We can see that opposing emotions such as loss and desire, aggression and receptivity, maintain a delicate equilibrium, and we could start imagining that the antagonism and coexistence, and the tension born from contradiction seen in Persson's practice symbolize today's world.

In Ragna Bley's paintings, the temporal element of melting snow is fused with paint, distancing herself from perfect human control over the canvas. The grand providence of nature is projected into her image-making process, evoking a sense of the ephemerality and temporality of existence. In Jani Ruscica's exhibition, dynamic and fluid wall drawings and video works resonated with each other, revealing the multilayered nature, plurality, and ambiguity of this world. The horizontally installed screens, in particular, avoided a confrontational structure with the viewer, creating a fluid relationship. Hanna Vihriälä's works—such as massive flowers composed of vast quantities of candies and a car form constructed from accumulated funeral ribbons—suggest a stance of barely maintaining monumental strength through aggregations of fragile, small materials that evoke femininity. A compelling thread runs through all these works in their expression of unstable, uncertain presence rather than solid, confident existence.

2025 Ars Fennica Prize nominees

The nominees for the Ars Fennica 2025 Prize were Roland Persson, Ragna Bley, Jani Ruscica and Hanna Vihriälä. According to Mami Kataoka, what unites the pieces produced by all of the nominees is the experience of unstable presence rather than rooted, confident existence.

Roland Persson (b. 1963, Sweden) – Winner 
Persson is known for his picturesque silicone sculptures and large-scale installations that present nature as a simultaneously destructive and regenerative force. The surreal scenes in his pieces radiate warmth, as flora and fauna reflect imprints of the relationship between human and nature. Persson graduated from the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts in 1993 and continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. He lives and works in Stockholm.

Ragna Bley (b. 1986, Sweden/Norway)
In Bley’s work, which spans large-scale paintings, installations and performances, organic forms leave space for chance and experimentation. Her work engages with the invisible and unpredictable forces of nature, repeatedly probing the tension between chance and intentionality. Bley earned her bachelor’s degree from the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts in 2011 and her master’s from London’s Royal College of Art in 2015. She now lives and works in Oslo.

Jani Ruscica (b. 1978, Finland/Italy)
Ruscica works with moving and printed images, sculpture and performance. Central to the artist’s practice is an inquiry into the layered, fluid, and unstable nature of meaning. Forms stretch and transcend established boundaries by challenging the viewer to define things unambiguously. The artist holds a bachelor’s degree from Chelsea College of Art & Design in London (2002) and a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (2007), and they work in Helsinki.

Hanna Vihriälä (b. 1974, Finland) – Winner of the Visitor's Choice title 
Vihriälä turns her attention to everyday moments and objects concealing broader feelings and experiences. Her large-scale works emphasise the tactile qualities of materials, exploring contrasts between durable and fragile, hard and soft. She also experiments with transparency, reflections, and shadows to enrich the visual experience of her art. Vihriälä graduated from the Estonian Academy of Arts in 2000 and completed her sculpture studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2003. She has created numerous public artworks for sites across Finland.

Ars Fennica 2025 exhibition

The exhibition featuring works by all the nominees runs at HAM from 24 October 2025 to 29 March 2026.

Contact Information

Henna and Pertti Niemistö Visual Art Foundation ARS FENNICA sr:
Executive Director Camilla Granbacka, camilla.granbacka@arsfennica.fi, +358 44 308 7931

HAM Communications:
Maarit Kivistö, maarit.kivisto@hamhelsinki.fi, +358 40 485 5687