The Brooklyn-based street artist Victor “Marka27” Quiñonez has received this year’s Frieze Impact Prize. The award recognises an artist whose work has had a profound social impact with $25,000 in prize money and a solo stand at this week's Frieze Los Angeles fair (20-23 February).
Marka27 is known for a distinctive aesthetic he has dubbed “Neo Indigenous”, which fuses elements of contemporary graffiti writing with the imagery of los tres grandes of the Mexican mural movement (Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros).
The artist’s very timely presentation at Frieze Los Angeles will focus on his I.C.E Scream series of paintings and sculptures, which take the form of popsicles. The work is a comment on the increasingly nativist rhetoric around immigration in the US and threats of even more draconian enforcement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) under US president Donald Trump.
Victor "Marka27" Quiñonez, Ni de aqui ni de alla paleta, 2025 Courtesy of Marka27 Design Studios
The prize, which is realised in collaboration with WME Impact and in partnership with the Center for Art and Advocacy, was determined this year by a panel featuring the collector and philanthropist Pamela J. Joyner, the interdisciplinary artist Sable Elyse Smith and the curator Taylor Renee Aldridge. Last year’s Frieze Impact Prize winner was the textile artist Gary Tyler; past winners have included Mary Baxter, Maria Gaspar, Narciso Martinez and Dread Scott.
