Beckers Art Award 2025 goes to Lisa Englund

Färgfabriken congratulates the artist, tapestry and dyer Lisa Englund who has been awarded the Becker Art Award 2025!

The scholarship, which was established in 1987, involves a prize of SEK 200,000, an exhibition in Färgfabriken’s main hall and at KKAM – Höganäs.

The exhibition opens on February 1 in Färgfabriken’s main hall and will be on display until March 16.

How does it feel to be this year’s Beckers Award winner?

Of course, it feels great and huge, an encouragement that can really be needed in the midst of all the struggle.

What is your artistic practice about?

Basically it is a quest for beauty, or perhaps sublimity is a better word. Tapestries are, in my opinion, the most beautiful object there is, they carry a value that can enhance any dull sketch and the dyeing can be described as a form of animism, an attempt to charge the material with magic, with the hope that it will spill over onto the weaves.

How does an artistic process start with you?

The starting point is the collection of pigments and the dyeing of the yarns. The tones I manage to produce set the framework for the images. In terms of subject matter, my go-to sources of inspiration are myths of various kinds and older textiles. I am concerned with connecting, making myself part of a tradition of storytelling, repeating motifs, symbols and patterns, but twisting and turning it, combining freely and mixing in my own characters. In the loom, I always try to leave room for improvisation, it feels important to let the possibilities and limitations of the technique play a role in the construction of the image.

What will you show in your exhibition at Färgfabriken?

I will show a bunch of tapestries made in the last 3 years. It will be exciting to show them at Färgfabriken, it feels like an optimal place for them, the sacred feeling in the room will be able to add a layer to the weaves and I think it can be an atmospheric exhibition.

The exhibition opens on February 1 in Färgfabriken’s main hall and will be open until March 16.

Read the jury’s motivation and more about Lisa Englund here!