With 4,329 submissions from 106 countries, the Prix Ars Electronica 2026 once again affirms its role as a central hub in the global network of media art. The four categories received 1,144 submissions in New Animation Art, 1,757 in Interactive Art+, 754 in Digital Humanity, and 674 in u19–create your world. 

In the category Prix Ars Electronica 2026 Digital Humanity,
Laura Colmenares Guerra is honoured with an Award of Distinction for her project R€¥€R$€.
Congratulations!

"With R€¥€R$€, Laura Colmenares Guerra has created an aesthetically compelling immersive work that introduces viewers to the complexity of one of the world’s most fascinating yet endangered ecosystems: the Amazon region. Through virtual reality and interactive cartographies, the project exposes the entanglement of ecological fragility with political and economic forces, pointing out the devastating impact of extractivism and deforestation.

R€¥€R$€ highlights the fatal connection between colonialism and capitalism, which is a central theme of the artwork. By using symbols such as gold, raw materials, or algorithmic processes, the artist draws attention to the historical exploitation of the Amazon region. It immediately becomes clear that this exploitation continues to follow the logic of resource extraction. Virtual reality makes this critique particularly effective by making the power structures palpable.

The fact that the challenges facing the Amazon region do not stop at political borders was subtly conveyed through a curatorial decision regarding the division of the areas to be explored: rather than following the logic of national borders, the exhibition is divided into twenty-one sections, corresponding to the headwaters of the Amazon’s major tributaries—across nine countries and more than 847 million hectares." - Jury Statement

Laura Colmenares Guerra (CO/BE) is a Colombian artist based in Brussels. Her practice encompasses installation, sculpture, and digital 3D narratives, including animation, XR, and ceramics 3D printing. Working from a research-based approach, she explores the relationships between contemporary Western societies and living ecosystems, questioning constructions of nature, territory, and technology as mediations of reality. Her work often transforms environmental data and topographic information into immersive, sensor-based experiences that connect audiences to distant ecological realities. Recent projects address themes of environmental fragility, interspecies transformation, and the entanglement between extractivist systems and vulnerable territories.

Getting closer to the Amazon is like zooming into an immensely complex and abundant system. Diving deeper is confronting, as it leads to the experience that, in fact, one knows nothing.

R€¥€R$€ delves into the socio-environmental situation of Amazonia. The work is structured in four chapters: immersive real-time 3D environments, built on Unreal Engine, transport the viewer along rivers, through jungle-like landscapes. As the viewer floats above the water, the names of the Indigenous Peoples appear inscribed in the river surface. Naming them was essential: they are the protectors of this territory.

The second chapter interweaves archival footage with the virtual world. The third, at the centre of the experience, presents six interactive maps revealing the pressures of extractivism: deforestation, oil and gas blocks, mining, hydroelectric plants, road infrastructure, and fire zones. Viewers navigate these layers, witnessing how extractive pressures accumulate and overlap across nine countries and more than 847 million hectares. The interactive maps are built on open-source geospatial data produced by RAISG, a consortium of civil society organisations across six Amazonian countries, in collaboration with COICA, representing more than 500 Indigenous Peoples across the basin.

The cartographic work explores the territory through hydrological divisions rather than political boundaries. Rivers are sacred, ancestors, the circulatory system of a living world. By structuring the experience around river basins, the work aligns itself with an understanding of territory as unified by water.

R€¥€R$€ is the third chapter of the Ríos Trilogy (2018–2024), exploring the Amazon Basin through language, cartography, and the construction of territory. The Ríos Trilogy does not pretend to speak for Amazonia or its peoples. It examines how colonial systems of representation construct particular narratives about a territory that belongs, first and foremost, to itself, and how human, cultural and environmental dimensions continue to collide with economic and political forces under acute climate stress. 

R€¥€R$€
Ríos Trilogy

TRAILER
TEASER (This is a 360-degree video: rotate the view with your mouse or finger and set the quality to 4K for the best experience)

R€¥€R$€ is coproduced by OHME.
With the support of the Vlaamse Overheid, Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Pôle Image Magelis, the Département de la Charente, and WBI.

Ars Electronica x Tallieu Art Office

Over the years, Tallieu Art Office presented already multiple artists in the context of Prix Ars Electronica, from Golden Nica Winners to Honorary Mentions, Awards of Distinction to presentations of installations and performances.

In 2009, Belgian artist LAWRENCE MALSTAF received the Golden Nica in the Interactive Art category for his immersive installation Nemo Observatorium 02002.
Lawrence Malstaf also performed SHRINK 01995 at Ars Electronica at the occasion of this Golden Nica in 2009.

In 2011, MARTIN MESSIER in collaboration with Nicolas Bernier received an Honorary Mention in the category of Digital Musics & Sound Art for La chambre des machines. In 2018, Martin Messier presented his performance Field at Ars Electronica.

In 2012, DAVID BOWEN received an Honorary Mention for Interactive Art for his installation fly tweet. 
In 2013, David Bowen participated at the Ars Electronica exhibition with his installations tele-present wind, in 2017 with fly AI and in 2025 with tele-present wind (Mars wind version) in collaboration with Istanbul Digital Art Festival (IDAF)

In 2015, Belgian artist ALEX VERHAEST received the Golden Nica for Temps Mort / Idle Times in the Computer Animation category. 
In 2022, Alex Verhaest received an Honorary Mention for her interactive philosophical game Ad Hominem in the Computer Animation category at Prix Ars Electronica.

In 2025, NAVID NAVAB and Garnet Willis were honoured with a Golden Nica in the category Digital Musics & Sound Art  for their project Organism.
Organism was also included in the Ars Electronica exhibition in 2024, one year before the Golden Nica.

More about our artists