Oskár Čepan

A total of 51 artists, including one artist collective, applied for this year’s Oskár Čepan Award. The open call closed at midnight on Sunday, May 31. The submissions reflect a broad spectrum of participants—from recent graduates to artists up to the age of 40—highlighting the strong interest in developing and presenting artistic work through the COČ platform at various stages of creative practice.

“The submitted portfolios demonstrated a wide range of media and themes, often emphasizing collaboration within multimedia projects. This not only reflects the interconnectedness of the current art scene but also signals a shift towards de-individualizing the creative process. Alongside the traditionally strong presence of intermedia practices, we noted significant interest from artists working in painting, photography, ceramics, object-based art, and performance,” said Miroslava Urbanová (Director of the Foundation – Center for Contemporary Arts) and Petra Nela Pučeková (Project Coordinator of COČ 2025).

The submitted portfolios were evaluated by an international jury composed of established experts in contemporary visual art.

Continuing their two-year mandate this year are Piotr Sikora and Erin Li, whose curatorial expertise and broad perspective across artistic scenes are highly valued. They were joined by two new jury members: Christina Li, who notably curated the Finnish Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale, and Nathalie Anglès, Executive Director and Co-founder of Residency Unlimited. Together, the jury selected three exhibiting artists from the 51 applicants. These artists will develop new projects and prepare an exhibition at the Koppel Villa, part of the Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava. The jury session took place on June 9, 2025, and the selection process, which involved several voting rounds and lasted approximately three hours, resulted in the choice of two female and one male laureate.

"In 2025, we were pleased with the large number of applicants. The jury meeting focused not only on a discussion about the applicants’ work, but also took into account the current socio-political situation and what benefit such an award can have for individuals. Through in-depth deliberations about the applicants’ work based on their submitted portfolios, but also jurors’ individual encounters in presentations at various local and international forums, we came to the conclusion that we will give space to three artists whose work to date has shown their enormous potential to further develop projects in dddd conditions and contexts. The selected artists work across different media and formats, ranging from impressive site-specific projects (Ľuboš Kotlár), to contemporary feminism-informed thinking about the self and the collective body online (Nikola Balberčáková) and to a poetic expansion of abstract painterly expression (Ráchel Jutka). While different in scale, these three artistic positions all address themes that resonate in the current era of fluidity and hybrid existence within online and offline subjectivities and interfaces, and we look forward to their presentations at the end of the year.” said Piotr Sikora, Erin Li, Christina Li and Nathalie Anglès.

The project is co-organized by the art support platform collective.