2025 Sam Gilliam Award Winner Announced by Dia Art Foundation and Sam Gilliam Foundation

2025 Sam Gilliam Award Winner Announced by Dia Art Foundation and Sam Gilliam Foundation

Dia Art Foundation and Sam Gilliam Foundation announced today that Sheela Gowda has been selected to receive the 2025 Sam Gilliam Award, which includes a $75,000 gift and the presentation of a public program at a Dia location in fall 2025. Established in 2023 by a generous gift from the Sam Gilliam Foundation and Annie Gawlak, president of the foundation and Gilliam’s widow, the award is granted annually over 10 years to an artist working anywhere in the world who has made a significant contribution in any medium and for whom the award would be transformative. Reflecting the critical support that grants provided Gilliam in developing his practice, the Sam Gilliam Award advances the foundation’s commitment to continuing his legacy as a teacher and champion of artists and extends Dia’s mission of supporting and providing an important platform for artists.

Gowda was chosen from a long list of artists nominated by a group of international curators and museum directors. She was selected as the second Sam Gilliam Award recipient by a panel of jurors comprising Jordan Carter, curator and co–department head, Dia Art Foundation, New York; Annie Gawlak, president, Sam Gilliam Foundation, Washington, D.C.; Courtney J. Martin, executive director, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York; Emiliano Valdés, independent curator and advisor, Guatemala City; and Zoé Whitley, writer and independent curator, London.

Gowda was awarded the grant due to her decades-long, consistently ambitious, and expansive practice. A Bengaluru-based artist known for her evocative, process-oriented practice that blends painting, sculpture, and installation, Gowda often incorporates into her work everyday and organic materials—such as cow dung, hair, incense, and tar drums—imbued with cultural and political significance. Rooted in her observations of urban and rural life in South India, Gowda’s practice investigates issues of labor, gender, and the sociopolitical conditions shaping contemporary society. Through her poetic yet politically charged installations, she transforms humble materials into powerful reflections on resilience, ritual, and the interconnectedness of human experience.

“It is a great honor to be selected as the 2025 Sam Gilliam Award recipient. Gilliam’s lifelong practice of interrogation and experimentation is something that I identify with, and his deep involvement with the art community is inspiring. I believe that as an artist it is not enough to pursue one’s own individual practice, but it is necessary and even critical in these present times to share experiences and ideas and be supportive of local as well as broader issues that are common to us,” said Sheela Gowda.

“We are thrilled that Sheela Gowda is this year’s Sam Gilliam Award recipient. Sheela’s process-oriented, interdisciplinary practice and decades-long exploration of social and political issues through her work reflect Sam’s own approach to art making. Her selection reaffirms the award’s extension of Sam’s legacy, amplifying support and awareness for today’s practicing artists and their important work,” said Annie Gawlak, president of the Sam Gilliam Foundation.

“We are delighted to announce Sheela Gowda as the second recipient of the Sam Gilliam Award. Gowda’s work has consistently increased in complexity and scale, not just for scale’s sake but proportionate with her work’s power and affect,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. “Drawing on the lineages of Minimal and Postminimal art, which form the core of Dia’s permanent collection, Gowda utilizes materials close to her lived experience—a cultural and geographic context that is underrepresented in the United States and in Dia’s own program. We hope that receiving this award will support the further development of Gowda’s practice and increase the international visibility of her work.”

In 2023, the Sam Gilliam Foundation selected Dia as its partner in developing the award based on the institution’s long-standing history of providing vital support to artists in the realization of ambitious projects and building widespread public appreciation of their work. From 2019 to 2022, Dia presented a major installation of Gilliam’s work from the 1960s and ’70s that situated the artist’s practice in dialogue with that of his Minimal and Postminimal peers at Dia Beacon, highlighting his career-defining innovations. The long-term display featured two drape paintings, both titled Carousel II (both 1968), installed together by Gilliam to form Double Merge (1968). In 2021, Dia made the historic acquisition of the paintings, thereby enshrining Gilliam’s work and legacy within the institution’s collection.

About Sheela Gowda

Sheela Gowda was born in Bhadravati, India, in 1957. Recent solo exhibitions include Of All People, daadgalerie, Berlin (2014); Sheela Gowda, Para Site, Hong Kong (2015); And That is No Lie, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2015–16); Sheela Gowda, Ikon, Birmingham, United Kingdom (2017); Remains, Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan (2019), and Bombas Gens Centre d’Arts Digitals, Valencia (2019–20); and It.. Matters, Lenbachhaus, Munich (2020). Group exhibitions include Indian Highway, Serpentine South Gallery, London (2008–09); In Order to Join – The Political in a Historical Moment, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany, (2013–14); A Beast, a God, and a Line, Samdani Art Foundation, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2018); When Faith Moves Mountains, Pinchuk Art Centre, Kyiv (2022); and The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998, Barbican Art Gallery, London (2024–25). Her work has been included in Documenta, Kassel (2007), as well as numerous biennials, such as Venice (2009), Singapore (2011), and São Paulo (2014). She lives in Bengaluru, India.

About Dia Art Foundation

Taking its name from the Greek word meaning “through,” Dia was established in 1974 with the mission to serve as a conduit for artists to realize ambitious new projects, unmediated by overt interpretation and uncurbed by the limitations of more traditional museums and galleries. Dia’s programming fosters contemplative and sustained consideration of a single artist’s body of work, and its collection is distinguished by the deep and long-standing relationships that the nonprofit has cultivated with artists whose work came to prominence particularly in the 1960s and ’70s.

In addition to Dia Beacon, Dia Bridgehampton, and Dia Chelsea, Dia maintains and operates a constellation of commissions, long-term installations, and site-specific projects, notably focused on Land art, nationally and internationally. These include:

·       Walter De Maria’s The New York Earth Room (1977) and The Broken Kilometer (1979), Max Neuhaus’s Times Square (1977), and Joseph Beuys’s 7000 Eichen (7000 Oaks, inaugurated in 1982 and ongoing), all located in New York

·       De Maria’s The Lightning Field (1977), in western New Mexico

·       Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), in the Great Salt Lake, Utah

·       Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973–76), in the Great Basin Desert, Utah

·       De Maria’s The Vertical Earth Kilometer (1977), in Kassel, Germany

·       Cameron Rowland’s Depreciation (2018)

About the Sam Gilliam Foundation

Established in 2023, the Sam Gilliam Foundation advances the vision and values of abstract artist Sam Gilliam by organizing and supporting significant exhibitions of the artist’s work, fostering new research and publications, and collaborating with arts organizations and institutions on initiatives that extend Gilliam’s generosity and enthusiasm for supporting emerging and longtime artists, art students, scholars, curators, and the cultural ecosystem at large. Helmed by Annie Gawlak, the foundation serves as a primary resource on the artist and a steward of his collection and archive, with important holdings of Gilliam’s work in a variety of mediums and original papers and materials pertaining to his life and work. Since its activation, the foundation has expanded its mission to champion the work of rising artists by establishing the Sam Gilliam Award in partnership with Dia Art Foundation, New York, and to continue Gilliam’s legacy by launching the Gilliam Visiting Artist Program in collaboration with the Speed Art Museum, Louisville, and the Sam Gilliam Lecture Series in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.