Iraqi artist Ali Eyal has received the Hammer Museum’s USD 100,000 Mohn Award. Established in 2012 and presented in tandem with the institution’s biennial “Made in L.A.” exhibition, the award recognizes emerging and underrecognized artists working in the greater Los Angeles area.

Born in Baghdad in 1994, Eyal works across painting, film, and installation to explore the entanglements between personal history, transitory memory, and political violence. His practice has gained international visibility in recent years, with presentations at the 18th Istanbul Biennial (2025), the 2025 Mercosul Biennial, and the 15th Sharjah Biennale (2023). He is slated to participate in the 2026 Whitney Biennial, which opens on March 8.

For “Made in L.A. 2025,” Eyal showed And Look Where I Went (2025), a nearly four-meter-wide oil-on-linen painting that depicts distorted, distressed figures beneath a burning sky. The work responds to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which Eyal witnessed as a child, as well as his 2024 visit to the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan. As remarked by the jury, the painting is “[a]nimated by a capacious emotional range” and stands as “a testimony of perseverance.”

Two additional prizes were announced alongside the Mohn Award. Chinese American multidisciplinary artist Carl Cheng—who often works under the pseudonym John Doe Co.—won the USD 25,000 Career Achievement Award, which recognizes his decades-long, materially experimental engagement with technology, consumer culture, and ecological and social concerns. Meanwhile, the USD 25,000 Public Recognition Award, determined by visitor vote, went to Los Angeles-based painter Greg Breda.

“Made in L.A. 2025” is on view at the Hammer Museum through March 1. 

Minnie Chan is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.