Dan Lie, Stella Zhong, and Other Up-and-Comers Win $25,000 Gold Art Prize for AAPI and Asian Diaspora Artists

The Gold Art Prize, a series of five awards given biennially to AAPI and Asian diaspora artists, has named this year’s batch of winners, among them up-and-comers such as Dan Lie and Stella Zhong.

In addition to Lie and Zhong, Morehshin Allahyari, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, and Kenneth Tam also won the prize, which awards each winner an unrestricted $25,000.

Lie, who won Berlin’s Preis der Nationalgalerie in 2024, is known for vast installations that function as active ecosystems, with soil, flowers, and more that continue to change form during the exhibition. Zhong creates spare paintings and sculptures whose minimal forms allude to her own feelings of alienation.

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Allahyari makes digital artworks that contend with colonialism and racism. Gork produces sculptures about how we experience sound. Tam crafts videos and installations that derive from his research into masculinity, often as it intersects with the Asian diasporic experience.

This is the third iteration of the prize, which was launched in 2021 by adviser Kelly Huang and Gold House, a Los Angeles–based organization with a focus on the AAPI community. As with the 2023 edition, the 2025 prize is funded by the Kahng Foundation.

In a statement, Huang said, “I’m proud that the Gold Art Prize has, since 2021, championed artists from the Asian diaspora, and its mission feels more vital than ever today. This year’s awardees reflect an even broader range of diasporic backgrounds, and it’s an honor to celebrate each artist’s contributions to shaping the future of contemporary art.”

Trisha Baga, CFGNY, Ajay Kurian, Sa’dia Rehman, and TT Takemoto were also finalists for this year’s prizes.