The performance artist Nezaket Ekici is the winner of this year's MO_Kunstpreis, awarded in Dortmund with prize money of €20,000. The Museum Ostwall at the Dortmunder U is showing her prize-winners' exhibition, titled "Was bleibt, was wird" (What remains, what becomes), until 14 February 2027.

Ekici made the award ceremony itself into a performance by reciting the names of all thirteen prize winners, folding the institutional ritual into her own artistic practice. Her work repeatedly brings together personal memory with questions of migration and body politics, and her own body is frequently the starting point of her pieces.

Born in Kırşehir, Turkey, in 1970, Ekici came to Germany with her parents at the age of three and grew up in Duisburg. She studied painting before turning to performance. Her work also engages with the experience of so-called guest workers, as in "Papas Poem" from 2019, in which she honours her father.

The prize includes the acquisition of two works for the museum collection: the video works "Papas Poem" and "Menopause" are being bought by the Museum Ostwall, anchoring her work in the institution beyond the duration of the show. An artist talk with Ekici and the museum's collection director Dr. Nicole Grothe is scheduled for 4 December, offering visitors a chance to hear her reflect on a practice that has long used humour as a way into difficult subjects.

The mayor of Dortmund, who serves as the prize's patron, praised the artist's willingness to unsettle audiences and to raise difficult questions rather than offer easy answers. Ekici's practice moves between humour, social criticism and political statement, with identity, religion, the body and culture running through her work.