Who was your favourite artist in 2024? Don’t panic, nobody’s judging you here. It’s alright if your knee-jerk reaction was to take a neutral stance—we don’t like playing favourites, either. But it’s a new year, and while we can’t predict much about what lies ahead, we’re willing to bet it will include gallery visits, and it’s always worth having a few names in your back pocket to look out for.
The editorial team at Elephant has scoured the globe to bring you the artists we want you to know about as we begin the new year. We have chosen artists based on their accomplishments in 2024 and their rumoured plans for 2025, but we have also gone on instinct and selected some of our personal favourites, too. Who knows? Maybe you’ll discover your new favourite artist this year. We certainly hope so.
Alfonso Gonzalez Jr.
Age: 36
Born/Based in: Los Angeles, California
Alfonso Gonzalez’s work is permeated by his hometown of Los Angeles. His paintings are often done on weathered surfaces to resemble those in the streets of L.A., referencing local advertising from his community.
Anthony Cudahy
Age: 36
Born/Based in: Fort Myers, Florida/Brooklyn, New York
Anthony Cudahy’s work feels intensely private; his subjects are usually turned away, leaving us with only an exposed back or a folded arm. When they do look directly at us, their faces are often indistinguishable. But that doesn’t matter. What draws us in is the sweeping tenderness of Anthony’s work, where warm hues make for a melting pot of embrace and persevering vulnerability. Mélanie Steen wrote about Anthony’s exhibition Double Spar at Grimm Gallery here.
Brook Hsu
Age: 38
Born/Based in: Pullman, Washington/New York and Wyoming
Brook Hsu grew up in Oklahoma, and her home state is often portrayed in her works. Through her verdant lens, ghostly renderings of Buffalo Bill’s problematic Wild West Shows can be seen behind a characteristic green foreground, and skeletons and rabbits hide in greenery.
Chemu Ng’ok
Age: 36
Born/Based in: Nairobi, Kenya
Chemu Ng’ok uses painting and drawing as a way to explore personal, psychological and spiritual relationships. Her practice spans spontaneous ink drawings and abstract figure paintings.
Chigozie Obi
Age: 28
Born/Based in: Lagos, Nigeria
Chigozie Obi’s vibrant paintings focus on the representation and diversity of Black people. Her work delves into how cultural narratives affect the experiences of individuals, particularly women, within specific communities.
Ellon Gibbs
Age: 30
Born/Based in: Brooklyn, New York
In Ellon Gibbs’s paintings, we see his figures crouched, one fist sometimes raised to the sky; they are primal, signifying the cycle of death and re-birth. Ellon also explores the power of nature in the age of climate catastrophe.
Genesis Tramaine
Age: 42
Born/Based in: Brooklyn, New York
Genesis Tramaine paints wild pictures of disfigured saints. Her practice stems from a place of deep devotion, marrying abstract portraiture with Gospel spirituality to redefine religious art.
Gisela McDaniel
Age: 30
Born/Based in: Bellevue, Nebraska/New York City, New York
Gisela McDanielis an American artist of Indigenous Chamorro descent whose process is almost as sensitive as the outcome of her work. Before painting, she engages her subjects in a series of intimate questions and records their responses. These recordings are later played alongside the works wherever they’re shown. Gisela was recently interviewed for Elephant magazine in conversation with Raven Halfmoon. This year we would love to see Gisela’s proposed painting of Raven come to life… fingers crossed.
Guadalupe Maravilla
Age: 49
Born/Based in: San Salvador, El Salvador/Brooklyn, New York
Guadalupe Maravilla is a multidisciplinary artist whose work revolves around notions of care and healing. Meka Boyle wrote about his project, Mariposa Relámpago, here.
Himali Singh Soin
Age: 38
Born/Based in: New Delhi, India/London, U.K.
A writer and interdisciplinary artist based between London and New Delhi, Himali Singh Soin has created operas using the calls of birds, transcribed the sound frequencies of mountain ranges, and dug through vast and varied archives to uncover lost stories and sounds of the mountains. Read Meka Boyle’s article on Himali for Elephant here.
Igshaan Adams
Age: 43
Born/Based in: Cape Town, South Africa
Through his detailed sculptural installations and beaded tapestries, imbued with cultural and religious references, South African artist Igshaan Adams examines the impact of lived experience and trauma on the psyche.
Isabella Ducrot
Age: 94
Born/Based in: Naples, Italy/Rome, Italy
Isabella Ducrot was introduced to us (all of us) much too late. Isabella’s career spans four decades, but her work was only “discovered” in 2018 by German gallery owner Gisela Capitain, catapulting her career into the global art scene. In 2024, Isabella collaborated with Dior, and later that year, we saw a significant collection of her work in an exhibition at Le Consortium Museum in Dijon. What does 2025 hold for the artist? We look forward to finding out.
Julien Creuzet
Age: 39
Born/Based in: Paris, France
Julien Creuzet represented France at last year’s Venice Biennale—a major moment for the French-Caribbean conceptual artist. Julien’s work includes colourful textual installations and hypnotic films.
Kennedy Yanko
Age: 36
Born/Based in: St. Louis, Missouri/Brooklyn, New York
Kennedy Yanko is an American sculptor and painter who is known for working with “paint skins” and found metal. This year is going to be a particularly exciting time for the artist, who has some big projects on the horizon (but more on that soon).
Koo Jeong A
Age: 58
Born/Based in: Seoul, South Korea/London, U.K.
Koo Jeong A examines the poetics of everyday life through their ephemeral sculptures and installation works. We still can’t forget their standout exhibition at last year’s Venice Biennale, Odorama Cities, for which they consulted the public to create a “scent portrait” of Korea, demonstrating how aromas—and the memory and emotion they evoke—can transcend nations and borders.
Lawrence Lek
Age: 43
Born/Based in: Frankfurt, Germany/London, U.K.
In 2023, Lawrence Lek created a fictional AI conglomerate inside an abandoned shopping centre in Berlin (if this premise interests you, you read about it here). It was the kind of mammoth project that deserved recognition, so we were excited to see Lawrence awarded the Frieze 2024 Artist Award. As AI becomes increasingly intertwined with our daily lives, Lawrence Lek is truly an artist for these times.
Louisa Gagliardi
Age: 36
Born/Based in: Sion, Switzerland/Zurich, Switzerland
Louisa Gagliardi creates her works digitally before painting them lightly with a see-through gel. It’s a process that may not seem massively significant, but in this translation between screen and canvas, Gagliardi’s work is alchemised. From it, an uncanny understanding of contemporary neurosis emerges. We’re looking forward to seeing Louisa’s work at Art Geneve at the end of January.
Marlene Smith
Age: 61
Born/Based in: Birmingham, U.K.
Marlene Smith is a multidisciplinary artist whose thoughtful work has a profoundly sensual nature, as was recently explored in her show Ah, Sugar at Cubitt Gallery in London last year.
Martine Syms
Age: 37
Born/Based in: Los Angeles, California
Martine Syms should already be on your radar—but in case she’s not, here’s your encouragement to check out this Los Angeles-based artist, whose work moves effortlessly between humour and profound social commentary. If you’re in Paris, make sure to check out her first-ever French retrospective, titled Total, at Lafayette Anticipations.
Mattia Guarnera MacCarthy
Age: 26
Born/Based in: London, U.K.
Bold, gritty, and a frequent exhibitor at Harlesden High Street, Mattia Guarnera MacCarthy celebrates everything we love about London’s emerging art scene. Mattia knows his city and has provided Elephant with a photo diary and guide to Notting Hill Carnival this summer. Party on.
Miles Greenberg
Age: 28
Born/Based in: Montreal, Canada/New York City, New York
You might recognise Miles Greenberg from our Issue 49 cover earlier this year, though ours wasn’t the only cover he appeared on. This year, the world took notice of the New York-based performance artist in a major way, and it’s no surprise. He worked with Marina Abramovic in 2023—a monumental moment for performance art—and presented work at last year’s the Venice Biennale, along with several other performances throughout the year. Miles’s newest body of work, DESIRE PATH, opened recently at Salon 94.
Mire Lee
Age: 37
Born/Based in: Seoul, South Korea/Amsterdam, Netherlands
2024 was a milestone year for Mire Lee, highlighted by her most ambitious installation to date in October, within the vast expanse of Tate’s Turbine Hall. You can read all about it here.
Nicholas Herrera
Age: 60
Born/Based in: El Rito, New Mexico
At 26 years old, Nicholas Herrera experienced a near-fatal car accident that left him in a coma for three weeks. During this time, he had vivid visions of Muertes—death figures of his deceased relatives—calling to him from the end of a tunnel of light. Nicholas was reborn as El Rito Santero (The Saint Maker of El Rito), and he now channels his traumas into his art. For a closer look at his journey and work, read Meka Boyle’s account of her visit to his studio here.
Rhea Dillon
Age: 29
Born/Based in: London, U.K.
Rhea Dillon is a true polymath, her practice spanning the realms of art, writing and poetry. Last year we couldn’t stop thinking about Rhea’s first solo institutional show, An Alterable Terrain, at Tate Britain. For insight into Rhea’s practice, check out Sam Moore’s thoughtful piece on her work here.
Roksana Pirouzmand
Age: 35
Born/Based in: Yazd, Iran/Los Angeles, California
In his article for Elephant, Theo Meranze writes of Roksana Pirouzmand’s work: ‘To be in genuine, cognitive recognition with the constancy of this suffering and one’s relationship to it is a challenging, painful responsibility. It is a process of constant mourning, one that puts into question our structures of collective memory and memorialization in the 21st century. Resultantly, amidst the corporatization of the art-world, it’s rare to find art that tackles this challenge without fetishistic nostalgia and with a cerebral openness. Roksana Pirouzmand’s art practice does, and in this way, it is a gift.’
Sally von Rosen
Age: 30
Born/Based in: Gothenburg, Sweden/Berlin, Germany
Another Elephant alum, Sally von Rosen appeared in Issue 49 alongside Richard Kennedy earlier this year. Sally has worked closely with the brilliant Anna Uddenberg as a collaborator throughout this year, and also presented her solo exhibition, Sotto Voce, at Von Der Hoeden Contemporary. Sally’s work is sinuous and bodily, the sort of art that makes you feel like it might be following you home.
Sasha Gordon
Age: 27
Born/Based in: Somers, New York/Brooklyn, New York
Sasha Gordon, a New York-based figurative painter, often features her own likeness in a series of eerie scenarios—doing topiary, emerging from behind beaded curtains, staring pensively into a shell, and being submerged underwater. Classic girl activities, basically. This year, Elephant sat down with Sasha for some good old fashioned girl talk.
Shilpa Gupta
Age: 49
Born/Based in:Mumbai, India
Shilpa Gupta is a contemporary artist working with multiple media, including found objects and performance art. Shilpa presented her first solo exhibition at the Barbican in 2022, which questioned one’s right to expression whilst raising urgent questions of censorship, confinement, and resistance.
Sin Wai Kin
Age: 34
Born/Based in: Toronto, Canada/London, U.K.
Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2022, Sin Wai Kin has been making waves in the art world for some time now, but we are always excited to see what this multidisciplinary artist has coming up.
Sinae Yoo
Age: 40
Born/Based in: Seoul, South Korea
Sinae Yoo’s paintings somewhat resemble the work of the old masters, often featuring billowing clouds lit from below and angelic forms which appear to descend, yet her work is distinctly contemporary, exploring today’s notions of “truth” and subjectivity.
Somaya Critchlow
Age: 32
Born/Based in: London, U.K.
Somaya Critchlow’s sultry expressions of female sexuality recently appeared at Maximillian William in her exhibition Triple Threat, curated by Hilton Als. The show focused solely on drawings and explored sensuality, power and the body in flux. Moody, atmospheric and mysterious—we want more.
Stanislava Kovalcikova
Age: 37
Born/Based in: Komárno, Czechoslovakia/Düsseldorf, Germany
Stanislava Kovalcikova creates works which play with the psyche. Sometimes resembling collage, her paintings are profound, humorous and nightmarish all at once.
Tobias Bradford
Age: 32
Born/Based in: Örebro, Sweden/Stockholm, Sweden and London, U.K.
‘The automation is a perverse little machine,’ writes Lydia Eliza Trail about Tobias Bradford for Elephant. ‘While it takes the form of a human, its movements can only approximate the soul.’ Here, Lydia writes about Tobias’s recent exhibition, As My Eyes Adjust, at Company Gallery in New York. If you’re fascinated by the macabre, be sure to check out his work.
Wynnie Mynerva
Age: 33
Born/Based in: Villa El Salvador, Peru/Lima, Peru
Rallying against centuries of phallocentric artwork, Wynnie Mynerva paints to dismantle entrenched notions of gender roles and challenge the binary constructs that underpin them. Katie Tobin wrote about Wynnie’s practice for Elephant here.
Zeinab Saleh
Age: 29
Born/Based in: Nairobi, Kenya/Dubai, United Arab Emirates
This year, we joined Zeinab Saleh for dinner, attended her exhibition at David Zwirner, and then walked through Hampstead Heath together in the pouring rain. It’s safe to say that we are fans of her work, and we think you will be too.
