Leyla Yenirce (born in 1992 in Qubîn, Kurdistan) completed her master’s degree under Jutta Koether at the HFBK Hamburg in 2022 and has already been awarded the 2024 Kunstpreis Berlin and the 2022 ars viva Prize. Her works have recently been exhibited at n.b.k. in Berlin (2025), the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg (2024), the Museum Folkwang in Essen (2024), the Falckenberg Collection at the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg (2024), and the Kunsthalle Münster (2024), among others. A solo exhibition at the Landesmuseum Oldenburg is planned for 2026.
In her artistic practice, Leyla Yenirce uses a multimedia approach to engage with representations of resistance as well as cultural, media, and military structures of dominance. She collects digital and analog visual material, which she incorporates into her interdisciplinary work in ways that are sometimes more and sometimes less obvious. Her visual archive attests to the widespread circulation of images depicting women in resistance, while simultaneously pointing to her own relationship with her native country of Kurdistan and the media’s influence on it. In her compositions, elaborate installations, video works, performances, and paintings, she masterfully applies various methods of sampling, layering, and collaging, thus responding to the material she uses. Yenirce is a cultural theorist, filmmaker, musician, painter, performer, and installation artist who combines all of these media in her artistic practice.
Jury member Yalda Afsah: “Leyla Yenirce creates powerful visual and acoustic spaces of resonance where collective and personal histories emerge, and in which violence, resistance, and memory become simultaneously palpable. We are recognizing her as an artist who has mastered the precise use of her media and transforms observation into a sensually perceptible tension.”
The jury for selecting the 2026 prizewinners this year included Yalda Afsah, Professor, HFBK; Kader Attia, Professor, HFBK; Martin Karcher, Curator, Kunstverein in Hamburg; Martin Köttering, President, HFBK; Ina Günther and Kerstin Loeffler, Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V.; and Jessica McClam, independent artist, Hamburg.
The Finkenwerder Art Prize, initiated by the Kulturkreis Finkenwerder e.V., is awarded every two years to an internationally outstanding artist whose work plays a significant role in the current art discourse. Past recipients include such notable figures as Georges Adéagbo, Renée Green, Candida Höfer, Christian Jankowski, and Julia Scher. Since 2022, the prize has been awarded in cooperation with the HFBK Hamburg, along with a grant for a promising HFBK graduate. Airbus Operations GmbH funds the prizes, including the exhibition and publication.
For more information, click here.
