Created in 2015, the Art and Humanity Prize each year recognises graduates of HEAD – Geneva whose work questions the links between art and humanitarian action.

For its tenth edition, the Museum is integrating the Prize into its programme and welcoming the laureate in a participatory residency in its new space, L’Atelier. This residency, at the heart of International Geneva, leads to the creation of a collective artwork produced with the participation of audiences and intended to join the Museum’s collections.

The Prize is awarded in two categories, the Audience Award and the Residency Award, during the official ceremony on Friday 30 January 2026 at the Museum.

The finalists are:

Maxime Heta, Master in Design Installation (Space and Communication)
"Cartographie des voix invisibles"
The project Cartographie des voix invisibles explores the links between memory, territory and identity through a participatory installation that extends an initial research project carried out by the artist in Kosovo. It takes the form of a sensitive cartography combining filmed images, sounds and testimonies collected at the Museum during the residency period, in which different diasporas are invited to take part. The residency becomes a place of hospitality and collective memory, where each contribution transforms the space into a living and inclusive archive.

Amina Jendly, Master in Fine arts, CCC - Critical Curatorial Cybermedia - Curatorial and research practices
"Feuillage de résistances, signaux de vie"
The project Feuillage de résistances, signaux de vie explores contemporary forms of resistance and opens a dialogue between Museum audiences and incarcerated individuals. The dialogue is carried out using ivy from the Museum’s gardens, a caring, tenacious and resilient plant. Shaped into letters created with the public, this ivy becomes a vector of attention and support addressed to detained people, within an evolving installation. Feuillage de résistances, signaux de vie thus weaves a link between human solidarity, living ecologies and new ways of offering support at a distance. The final work, a textile “burrow”, takes the form of a symbolic refuge where messages, gestures of support and imaginaries of shared survival come together.

Reema Nubani, Bachelor in Fine arts
"How to tame a wild bird"
The project How to tame a wild bird questions notions of captivity, vulnerability and resistance through a booklet combining poetry and ornithology, revealing the violence of domestication practices. A participatory installation invites the public to transform a concrete panel into a collective nest or cage by hanging small fragile objects that become traces of presence. Around this structure, concrete and zinc painting-sculpture-x-s marked by cracks and corrosion extend the reflection on weight and flight, violence and resilience.

Lola Rust, Bachelor in Product Design - Jewellery and Accessory
"Ouvrir la voie"
The project Ouvrir la voie invites the public to reinvent traditional tales by embodying feminist characters, thus transforming limiting narratives into spaces for creativity and collective reflection. Through three miniature sets, accessories and multilingual dialogues, participants become the actor-rice-x-s of new inclusive and critical versions of these inherited stories.

Marc-Arthur Sohna, Master in Design Installation (Space and Communication)
"Fragments d’espoir"
The project Fragments d’espoir invites the public to rekindle a capacity for hope in the face of contemporary crises. Through the participatory creation and decoration of ceramic amulets, individual aspirations come together to form an evolving installation, symbolising a shared strength. During facilitated sessions combining listening, readings of tales, myths and texts on the power of collective gestures, the public is encouraged to reflect on solidarity-based engagement and to rediscover hope in social transformation. The residency concludes with a dance performance that brings these symbols together, embodying the shift from individual intention to collective action.

INTERNATIONAL PRIZE LAUREATE

Mohamad Khamis, 3rd year Master’s student in Architecture and Urban Design at ALBA
"Reconvertir pour accueillir : d’un état délaissé à un lieu humanisé"
The project for the temporary and participatory conversion of the building The Egg in Beirut is an urban planning project that aims to respond quickly and effectively to the needs of displaced people facing an emergency situation following the bombardments that affected the city. The Egg, designed in 1965 to become the largest shopping centre in the Middle East, is an emblematic building in central Beirut, close to Martyrs’ Square. The project was interrupted by the war, and its basements, central tower and offices are now abandoned. With this project, which brings together art, architecture and humanitarian action, Mohamad Khamis imagines a rehabilitation of the site, conceived for and with local residents. The Egg would thus become an inclusive and committed space, reflecting humanitarian values of mutual aid and care for vulnerable people, while respecting their identity and dignity.