Evelyn Taocheng Wang will win the 31st Wolfgang Hahn Prize of the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig.
Born in 1981 in Chengdu, China, Wang was trained in traditional Chinese painting and literature in Nanjing before she moved to Europe for postgraduate studies at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and De Ateliers in Amsterdam, a city in which she has been based since 2012.
‘Wang’s mixed-media paintings are comprehensive and wry studies of contemporary society and human behaviour,’ Christina Li wrote for ArtReview in 2017. ‘Her expansive practice, which crosses media, offers fragmented views of her external and internal fantasies and realities from the estranged place of an outsider.’
Her works have been shown in solo exhibitions at the Museum Dordrecht, the Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai, the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf and the Museum Abteiberg in Mönchengladbach, among others. She received the ABN AMRO Art Award in Amsterdam and the Dorothea von Stetten Art Prize.
‘Evelyn Taocheng Wang’s work is very touching because it breaks with the abstract, detached and museal that is still associated with fine art today in a very personal and emotional way. Her drawings in traditional Chinese techniques of writing and painting are like commentaries on Western culture, becoming intimate, like a private poetry that presents itself as non-conformist and outrageous,’ guest juror Susanne Titz said in a statement. ‘Wang has a special power to bring her own identity into the work: the migrant, the sexual, the everyday felt and the culturally educated. Her visual work, text and performance deal with the shimmering of identity and the fact that art and literature can actually provide thoughts and ideas for one’s own life.’
The Wolfgang Hahn Prize is awarded annually by the Gesellschaft für Moderne Kunst am Museum Ludwig. The prize money of 100,000 euros – funded by the members’ contributions – goes towards the acquisition of a work or group of works by the artists for the collection of the Museum Ludwig as well as an exhibition organised by the Museum Ludwig of the acquired works by the awardee, and an accompanying publication. Previous winners include Anna Boghiguian (2024), Francis Alÿs (2023), as well as Frank Bowling (2022), Betye Saar (2020), Isa Genzken in 2002 and Cindy Sherman in 1997.
The award ceremony will take place at Museum Ludwig on 7 November 2025, during Art Cologne.
