2026 Henki Art Prize

Free to enter and open to all artists around the world

The Henki Art Prize offers an international platform that recognizes artists while fostering critical engagement with water as a transformative element in contemporary art.

Theme

Still We Look. Still We Look.

The 2026 Henki Art Prize invites artists to respond to the theme Still We Look. Still We Look.

Across the history of art, water has appeared as landscape, mirror, horizon, symbol, and sublime force. It has held beauty and danger, movement and memory, distance and return. Today, water asks to be seen differently. It is no longer only an image before us, but evidence around us.

It rises, recedes, floods, dries, melts, stains, carries, and returns. It moves through bodies, cities, coastlines, histories, and systems, holding the traces of a world under pressure.

And still, we look.

We live in a time when crisis is no longer concealed. The images have circulated. The warnings have returned. The evidence has become familiar. Yet familiarity does not always lead to responsibility. At times, looking becomes distance; awareness becomes fatigue; spectacle becomes a substitute for response.

Still We Look. Still We Look. considers witnessing as a defining condition of contemporary life. What does it mean to see, to know, and still continue? How does water record what human life tries to forget? When does looking become care, resistance, denial, or complicity?

This year’s theme welcomes works that approach water as subject, material, metaphor, witness, and force, engaging with memory, ecology, body, ritual, displacement, contamination, grief, endurance, return, and the uneasy space between awareness and action.

Eligibility

Submitted artwork must be related to the theme Still We Look. Still We Look.
The work must explore or respond to the element of water – either through its physical forms (such as oceans, rivers, ice, steam, tears, or rain) or its conceptual, cultural, or symbolic dimensions (such as fluidity, purification, transformation, reflection, or environmental concerns).
All media are accepted, including painting, sculpture, photography, and digital or video-based works.
For video works, submissions must not exceed 5 minutes in length.
Artists from all over the world are welcome to enter.
All entries must be original and solely created by the artist.
Please Note: Only one form entry per artist is allowed. You may submit the artwork created within the last two years.

Entry Fee

Entry to the Henki Art Prize is free for the first work. Each additional work is 20 USD, with a maximum of two additional works.

How to Apply

To participate, please fill out our entry form. By entering, you agree to the Terms below. For any questions, feel free to contact us at info@henkiart.com.

Jurors and Judges

The jury consists of a group of professionals, including but not limited to active artists, curators, and gallery directors. Each juror reviews submissions and returns scores to the staff, who summarize the scores and provide the list to the judges for final determination. Then, five artists are shortlisted as finalists, including the winner.