From left to right: Carlos Muñoz, Lorena Pizarro and Mariona Moncunill (jury); Pilar Cruz (director of the Art Nou Festival) and Elsa Casanova (artist).
Artist Elsa Casanova wins the 2026 Art Nou Prize for the exhibition presented by ADN Galeria at the festival’s fifteenth edition.
Elsa Casanova, presented by ADN Galeria, has been awarded the 2026 Art Nou Prize for a proposal exploring the ways in which we construct, represent and shape our understanding of the animal. The prize was announced yesterday during the closing of the festival’s fifteenth edition, held at La Capella.
Casanova’s exhibition stems from research into taxidermy, hunting and the devices used to represent nature. Through these practices, the artist examines the distance between animals and the images we produce of them, focusing on the visual codes that determine what we understand as wild, natural or characteristic of a species.
Within this framework, taxidermy becomes a particularly revealing setting. The animal body, removed from its environment and reconstructed according to certain conventions, is transformed into a fixed image. The postures, gestures and appearance of the specimens reflect a preconceived idea of how an animal should be presented. Casanova exposes this process of construction and the power relations that shape the way we look at other species.
The exhibition therefore introduces a critical dimension concerning violence and its representation. The traces of hunting, wounds and anything that disrupts the idealised image of the animal take on a significant role in a reflection on the way certain visual devices soften, organise or even conceal the material conditions that make these images possible.
The jury, comprising Mariona Moncunill, from La Capella’s curatorial team; Lorena Pizarro, gallerist at Seltz by Ritterferrer; and collector Carlos Muñoz, selected Casanova’s project from among the participating proposals in an edition that brought together more than 110 emerging artists.
The Art Nou Prize joins other awards presented during this fifteenth edition, including the SWAB Prize to EXs for the proposal by Jamín Giudici and Leire Lacunza Miranda, and the Art-O-Rama Prize to ethall for Marga Estelrich’s project.
The anniversary edition has presented its programme across 22 galleries, five cultural institutions and 22 independent spaces in Barcelona and L’Hospitalet. The closing event also featured a performance by Alicia Val, programmed in collaboration with Club9.
With the presentation of the prize to Elsa Casanova, Art Nou concludes fifteen editions dedicated to creating spaces for visibility, exchange and professional development for emerging art.
