Artist Cassidy Toner has won the 2026 Mobilière Prize, the longest-running art award presented by a Swiss private insurance company. The prize was announced on Friday 30th January during Art Genève, which closed yesterday at Palexpo in Geneva.
Born in Baltimore in 1992 and based in Basel since 2016, Toner is recognised for a practice that uses humour, vulnerability and institutional critique to probe the structures and unspoken assumptions of the art world. Her work deploys irony and self-deprecation not as lightness, but as a tool to destabilise aesthetic values, hierarchies and habits of looking.
This 30th edition of the Mobilière Prize coincides with the insurance cooperative’s 200th anniversary and expands the award’s scope to address long-term financial security for artists.
Zurich-based artist Pedro Wirz, who nominated Toner, described her work as
“scratching the veneer of our certainties”
and praised its ability to disarm through humour while remaining sharply critical and emotionally resonant.
Seven artists were shortlisted for the 2026 prize, each engaging with questions of coexistence and contemporary social dynamics through different formal and conceptual approaches. Alongside Toner, the nominees included Monika Emmanuelle Kazi, Lorenza Longhi, Anita Muçolli, Yoan Mudry, Gaia Vincensini and Ilaria Vinci.
Founded in 1996 and renamed the Mobilière Prize in 2005, the award has become a significant platform for emerging artists working in Switzerland. Presented annually, it reflects La Mobilière’s long-term commitment to contemporary art as a space for social reflection, experimentation and cultural dialogue.
About the artist
Cassidy Toner (b. 1992, Baltimore, USA; based in Basel, Switzerland) creates work that traverses sculpture, painting, installation, text and video with a dry, incisive humour and an eye for the absurdities of perception and value. Her practice balances formal experimentation with a critical engagement with art-world systems, allowing her works to oscillate between psychological intimacy and broader cultural critique.
Toner’s work has been presented in solo and duo exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Basel (Besides the Point, curated for the Manor Art Prize 2025), PHILIPPZOLLINGER (Zurich), All Stars (Lausanne), Galleria Castiglioni (Milan), Sgomento (Zurich), KunstRaumRiehen and Saint Luke (Zurich).
Her work has also appeared in major group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Zürich, the Swiss Institute in New York, Kunsthalle Basel, Rinde am Rhein (Düsseldorf), Forde (Geneva), N/A/S/L (Mexico City) and Haus Konstruktiv (Zurich).
Toner’s practice has been recognised with significant honours, including the Kunstkredit Award Basel-Stadt, the Kiefer Hablitzel Prize and the Manor Kunstpreis 2025, underpinning her position as one of her generation’s distinctive voices in contemporary painting and object-based enquiry.
Her work is held in public and private collections and has been featured in editorial platforms including Artforum, Topical Cream and Spike Art Magazine, reinforcing a practice that bridges critical discourse and formal invention.
