The runners-up of the Seen Mentor Prize are…
When we launched the Seen Mentor Prize, our goal was value, not just exposure. I wanted to help artists who needed direction or someone to believe in their work. Because I know how hard it is to navigate the art world without any real support.
I was shocked and overwhelmed when over 100 artists entered. 100! I wasn’t overwhelmed by the number, but by the quality. Honestly, the submissions were next level. Choosing one winner felt like an impossible task.
While there was a clear winner, we wanted to celebrate the incredible runners-up who deserve to be seen. These creators stayed with us—their work, vision, and sheer persistence to make. That's why we do what we do here at Seen. So, in no particular order, allow me to introduce you to the incredible runners-up for the Seen Mentor Prize below.
Every single one of these artists deserves to be seen, and frankly, if you’re thinking about building a collection this is a very solid place to start looking.
Stay tuned—we can't wait to share the winner of the first ever Seen Mentor Prize with you soon!
-Carrie & the Seen Team
P.S. Be the first to know when we re-open submissions to the Seen Mentor Prize by signing up below!
Wilma is archiving personal histories with breath-taking care and clarity. Domestic was a powerful installation she did that memorializes women killed by male violence in the UK since 2013 using plates inscribed with their names. That's a work that stayed with me for years and seeing what she's been working on recently just hit.
Winky catches the invisible threads that tie our day lives together. In her latest series Shadow Kid's, Winky is capturing the fleeting beauty and fragility of childhood. Life-sized silhouettes layered with relics of the past become quiet reminders of innocence at risk.
Clara turns thread and fabric into vibrant acts of storytelling. Her stitched works treat the line itself as a living searching force pushing the boundary between painting and text to art.
Just in a photographer who quietly honors traditional and vernacular worlds, capturing overlooked details that reveal deep living histories. His work transforms the ordinary into the poetic and offers a tender meditation on how places shape us.
Hatty uses cloth, worn, familiar, and intimate to explore memory, trauma, and repair and weaves these these deeply personal and collective narratives into material.
Cayce blurs the boundaries between painting and embroidery in really astonishing ways. They're like, they've got psychological layers. And when viewed from their reverse sides, they're like, chaotic and beautiful and that tension between what we see and the faces we present the world and the unseen complexity of lies beneath man.
Dan is mapping the internal landscapes that we all carry inside. His collaged drawings blend vintage imagery with a personal mark making to create really political statements. His work feel like a sort of fragmented journal.
Zita is creating fragile, beautiful confrontations with loss, longing, and survival. She's touching at the edges of our human attempt to control nature and how ridiculous that is, layering them meticulously with her detailed, slightly disorienting compositions.