LONDON (AP) — Scottish artist Nnena Kalu has been awarded the Turner Prize for work that includes vivid abstract drawings and hanging sculptures, the first artist with a learning disability to win Britain’s most famous visual art award.
Kalu, 59, who has autism, received the 25,000-pound ($33,000) prize on Tuesday evening at a ceremony in Bradford, northern England.
Her winning works included a series of brightly colored cocoonlike shapes made of wrapped materials that hung amid the concrete pillars of a disused power station in Barcelona.
The judging panel led by Tate Britain director Alex Farquharson praised the “powerful presence” of her “bold and compelling” work.
Kalu, who has limited verbal communication, is a resident artist at ActionSpace’s studio, which supports learning disabled artists in London.
Charlotte Hollinshead of ActionSpace said Kalu had "made history.”
“This is a major, major moment for a lot of people. It’s seismic. It’s broken a very stubborn glass ceiling,” Hollinshead said onstage at the award ceremony in Bradford, the U.K.’s 2025 city of culture.
Kalu beat three other artists — Rene Matic, Mohammed Sami and Zadie Xa — to the prize, which was founded in 1984 and named for 19th-century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner.
Established to promote young British artists, and now open to U.K. artists of any age, the prize helped make stars of shark-pickling artist Damien Hirst, potter Grayson Perry, sculptor Anish Kapoor and filmmaker Steve McQueen.
But it has also been criticized for rewarding impenetrable conceptual work and often sparks debate about the value of modern art. Winners such as Hirst’s “Mother and Child Divided,” which consists of two cows, bisected and preserved in formaldehyde, and Martin Creed’s “Lights On and Off” -- a room with a light blinking on and off -– have drawn scorn from sections of the media.
Nnena Kalu, second from right, is announced as the winner of the Turner Prize 2025 at a ceremony at Bradford Grammar School, in Bradford, England, Tuesday Dec. 9, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
Nnena Kalu, right, is announced as the winner of the Turner Prize 2025 at a ceremony at Bradford Grammar School, in Bradford, England, Tuesday Dec. 9, 2025. (James Speakman/PA via AP)
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A massive avalanche of garbage at Indonesia’s largest landfill killed seven people after heavy overnight rain triggered a rubbish dump collapse, officials said Tuesday.
More than 300 search-and-rescue personnel, using heavy machinery and sniffer dogs, were deployed to the sprawling dump site late Sunday at the Bantargebang Integrated Waste Treatment Facility in Bekasi, a city just outside the capital of Jakarta. Rescuers worked cautiously amid unstable heaps of waste, said Desiana Kartika Bahari, who heads Jakarta's Search and Rescue Office.
She said the victims included two garbage truck drivers, three scavengers and two food stall sellers who had been working or resting near the landfill, while six people managed to escape the disaster. No more missing people were reported by families as of Tuesday morning, Bahari said.
Photos and videos released by the National Search and Rescue Agency showed excavators digging through the collapsed mound, where several garbage trucks and small food stalls were buried.
The National Disaster Management Agency's spokesperson, Abdul Muhari, urged strict safety protocols during the search, noting that rain was forecast in the area and further movement in the trash mounds could endanger those conducting the search.
Sunday's deadly collapse renewed scrutiny of Bantargebang, a critical but overwhelmed landfill that receives most of Greater Jakarta’s daily household waste. The site has faced repeated warnings about capacity, prompting efforts to overhaul Indonesia’s waste management system.
Late last year, the government announced a two-year deadline to clear Bantargebang through an accelerated waste-to-energy project aimed at reducing chronic over reliance on open dumping. The initiative, backed by a new presidential regulation intended to streamline licensing and encourage investment, calls for converting refuse into electrical or thermal energy.
In this photo released by the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) on Monday, March 9, 2026, rescuers use heavy machines to search for victims of an avalanche of garbage that killed multiple people at a dump site in Bantargebang, West Java, Indonesia. (BASARNAS via AP)
In this photo released by the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency (BASARNAS) on Monday, March 9, 2026, rescuers inspect the site of an avalanche of garbage that killed multiple people as heavy machines are used to search for victims at a landfill in Bantargebang, West Java, Indonesia. (BASARNAS via AP)
