6 emerging artists to know in 2025

Here at Wallpaper*, our editors are constantly out and about taking in the best the art and design world has to offer. With so much to see, though, it can be hard to keep up with the newest emerging artists and creatives who are shaking up the scene. Fortunately, we’ve done the hard work for you and have identified some of the top creative names to know. From intricate drawings that take on sculptural qualities to paintings that reference European landscape traditions, the work from this international crop of young artists is both visually stunning and endlessly intriguing. Below, six new artistic talents to have on your radar in 2025.

Saskia Colwell

Saskia Colwell was born in 1999 in London, where she currently lives and works. After graduating the Masters Painting Programme at the Royal College of Art in 2023, her work has been included in several group exhibitions. But it’s Imperfect Symmetry, a drawing that was part of ‘Skin on Skin,’ her solo exhibition at Victoria Miro, Venice, that caught our eye. By working with the ambiguity of the human body—its fleshy folds and creases, for example— and challenging the male gaze, she transforms the mundane into the sensual. Colwell’s work could be considered pornographic, but her intricate mark making and chosen medium of charcoal-on-vellum (animal skin which has been stretched over board) adds a softness and innocence to her work. Her subjects, positioned in the foreground and almost floating within the frame, lends a curious, alluring quality. Colwell’s perspective on the human form is an intriguing one, as she carefully avoids objectifying and instead journeys into expressive and sensual possibilities.

Tasneem Sarkez

Artist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references in her work, from treasures accumulated on travels to the work of historian Pascal Ménoret. Based in New York, Sarkez was born in 2002 to Libyan parents living in Portland, Oregon. Since bursting onto the scene, she’s leaned into ‘Arab kitsch,’ an aesthetic that was highlighted in her debut solo show, ‘White-Knuckle’ at Rose Easton. Her preoccupation with the familiar and the idiosyncratic began young, she reflects, meaning she was ‘always looking for things, constantly scanning the room.’ Her work, which slants both ironic and serious, inspects the satire inherent to politics, and feminine and masculine constructs.

Anna Calleja

For Maltese artist Anna Calleja inspiration comes via personal experience. In a world that is suspended in uncertainty, her interests are grounded in the tension between comfort and melancholy, isolation and connection. Her oil paintings capture moments within a home environment, some based in memory, others constructed and staged. Her techniques nod to Catholic painting tradition with their glossy surfaces, glowing light and symbolic hand gestures, which she has adapted through her own contemporary lens. ‘The Virgin Mary is this impossible form of a woman,’ the artist previously told Wallpaper*. ‘She is a mother stripped of her sexuality, which is completely impossible to achieve. Growing up Catholic, there are all these ideas of how a woman should be.’ Her new paintings, which were showcased at Sim Smith gallery in London, dive deep into her family history and her experiences as a queer woman.

Jake Grewal

Jack Grewal is a rising star of the British art scene. His work is an exploration of figuration and landscape via the use of charcoal and oil paint. European scenes and Romanticism fuel his work, which is scattered with forests and clouded terrains which offer a safe space for queer intimacy and desire. His depictions of figures can be seen as individuals gathering, or a single moving figure. These cryptic scenes echo tension between past and present and highlights the relationship between humans and nature.

Recently, his third solo show, ‘Under the Same Sky’ at London’s Studio Voltaire, depicted smaller, more intimate works displayed in the gallery’s former Victorian mission hall. Grewal felt that the space was perfect to showcase his work and told Wallpaper* at the time that it felt ‘open and expansive’ which reflected the new paintings. ‘I think people think my work is quite closed and intense, quite dark, and I wanted to make a different statement,’ he said.

Somaya Critchlow

Somaya Critchlow lives and works in London, where she focuses on drawing and painting. This February, Critchlow opened her first solo show in the U.K.,’The Chamber’ at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, and in 2024 showcased a solo exhibition ‘Triple Threat’, curated by Hilton Als at Maximillian William. The latter focused on her drawing work. Her work focuses primarily on the naked body, in particular the naked body of Black women. ‘I’m fascinated by the nude. I’m fascinated by all the fuss around the nude, I’m fascinated with it endlessly,’ Critchlow explained in a video for Dulwich Picture Gallery, a space she has been familiar with since childhood. The subjects of her drawings and paintings, therefore, are rarely clothed, displaying a confident intimacy that invites the viewer to get closer.

Louis Fratino

Brooklyn, New York-based artist Louis Fratino crafts intimate paintings drawn from personal memory. What resonates with his work is his ability to capture the more intimate nuances of daily life. His first solo exhibition, ‘Satura,’ which was on show at the Centro Pecci in Italy, effortlessly captured this. His subjects include lovers, friends and family. Queer cultural history is central to Fratino’s work and thematic breadcrumbs scattered throughout the work in ‘Satura’ – paintings, lithographs, exploratory drawings – coax the viewer along. Sexuality and intimacy are constant within his compositions, which also reference the work of painters like Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. Fratino’s work beautifully encompasses engagement with queer history, Italian landscapes and the body itself.