H
Helen Ridley
Guest
- Thread Author
- #1
Immersive, engaging and impactful. Our Site Specific shortlist showcases illustrators working on a big scales to make even making bigger statements.
Image Credit: Laura Morsley
We love how our Site Specific category shortlist is an opportunity for illustrators to showcase their art in physical spaces, captivating their audience with large instalments and vibrant colours.
Celebrating self-initiated work and experimental pieces that push the boundaries of illustration. Our Site Specific category is an opportunity for illustrators to dive into new avenues and diversify their practice. This year’s category includes use of scale, and experiments in technique, process and ideas. Explore our exceptional 2026 Shortlist highlights.
And you can check out the full WIA2026 Shortlist on our projects page.
Professional
Be Child is a large-scale installation, inspired by the illustrator’s childhood memory of falling asleep beneath a moving mobile. She created a suspended work inviting visitors to reconnect with their inner child. The large mobile was installed in a 14 by 11 meter space, with various shapes hanging together in a layered composition. Visitors were free to walk through the installation, sit beneath it, or explore the different forms, experiencing the artwork from multiple perspectives.
Teuntje Fleur is a illustrator from the Netherlands.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Professional
Pen So created a surreal café with the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong, transforming the fair into an immersive space inspired by urban rituals and human connection. Sip, sketch, and reflect among illustrated napkins and quiet encounters, where space and ocean cities evoke our curiosity to explore the unknown. His illustrations were featured in Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2025. The café wall was 20 meters long and 3 meters high.
Pen So is an Hong Kong illustrator and comics artist.
Click Here To See The Full Project
New Talent
Stefania created this project as a response to place. The brief was a large-scale artwork for New Bond Street that could speak to its context. As a Latin American artist, she proposed a dialogue between Global South and North, honouring how fashion draws from traditional cultures and ancestral knowledge. It celebrates exchange, diversity, and storytelling.
Stefania Tejada is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist based in Paris.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Professional
The client wanted Emmi to produce artwork to blur old and new and guide people to the right floor after a 19th-century heritage building was converted into a nursery.
The illustrations create a floor-to-floor narrative; each level is a mini‑ecosystem with different animals, helping children identify the floors and engaging all passers-by.
Emmi Jormalainen is a Helsinki-based visual artist and illustrator.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Professional
My task was to create a mural design for the Polish Olympians Primary School in Ciechocinek.
My goal was to showcase as many athletes as possible. It wasn’t possible to showcase all the Olympians. The selection process was the most challenging. I focused on a variety of sports, which heightened the dynamism of the illustrations, which was crucial for me.
The colors are subdued, a result of the choice of anti-slip, eco-friendly paints used in the project.
Katarzyna Bogucka is an illustrator based in Poland
Click Here To See The Full Project
Professional
The illustrator painted this mural to turn a plain backstreet into a bright, welcoming path for daycare children. It adds colour and joy to their daily walk to the park, making a simple urban space feel much friendlier for kids.
Delphine is an illustrator based in Canada
Click Here To See The Full Project
Saskia Blake:
New Talent
This project is to encourage walkers to notice the mountain, and to consider what your relationship to the land is. Walking in Scotland is not a Neutral act.
The right to roam, wasn’t always ours, it was a hard-won battle. Now to walk freely through the mountains and moorlands of Scotland is a quiet declaration of belonging.
As you walk through the rain, wind, snow and shifting light, you experience what it means to belong, to and be part of a landscape.
Saskia Blake is an illustrator based in the UK
Click Here To See The Full Project
Professional
Laura was commissioned by Garden Square in Orkney to design a statement mural outside their venue to welcome visitors. The mural was to represent Orkney in her contemporary style and reflect its rich history and traditions, Scottish folklore, and the vast abundance of nature in and around the islands. Laura then designed the mural to be a 3D layered installation piece. Creating a greater sense of depth and visual impact for the entrance, allowing visitors to walk alongside the characters as they enter.
Laura Morsley is an illustrator based in the UK
Click To See The Full Project Here
You can explore the full WIA2026 Shortlist and Illustrator Interviews on our Projects page..
Image Credit: Laura Morsley
We love how our Site Specific category shortlist is an opportunity for illustrators to showcase their art in physical spaces, captivating their audience with large instalments and vibrant colours.
Celebrating self-initiated work and experimental pieces that push the boundaries of illustration. Our Site Specific category is an opportunity for illustrators to dive into new avenues and diversify their practice. This year’s category includes use of scale, and experiments in technique, process and ideas. Explore our exceptional 2026 Shortlist highlights.
And you can check out the full WIA2026 Shortlist on our projects page.
Teuntje Fleur: Be Child, Mobile
Professional
Be Child is a large-scale installation, inspired by the illustrator’s childhood memory of falling asleep beneath a moving mobile. She created a suspended work inviting visitors to reconnect with their inner child. The large mobile was installed in a 14 by 11 meter space, with various shapes hanging together in a layered composition. Visitors were free to walk through the installation, sit beneath it, or explore the different forms, experiencing the artwork from multiple perspectives.
Teuntje Fleur is a illustrator from the Netherlands.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Pen So: Surreal Café
Professional
Pen So created a surreal café with the Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong, transforming the fair into an immersive space inspired by urban rituals and human connection. Sip, sketch, and reflect among illustrated napkins and quiet encounters, where space and ocean cities evoke our curiosity to explore the unknown. His illustrations were featured in Affordable Art Fair Hong Kong 2025. The café wall was 20 meters long and 3 meters high.
Pen So is an Hong Kong illustrator and comics artist.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Stefania Tejad: Expressions of the Universe
New Talent
Stefania created this project as a response to place. The brief was a large-scale artwork for New Bond Street that could speak to its context. As a Latin American artist, she proposed a dialogue between Global South and North, honouring how fashion draws from traditional cultures and ancestral knowledge. It celebrates exchange, diversity, and storytelling.
Stefania Tejada is a Colombian multidisciplinary artist based in Paris.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Emmi Jormalainen: Visible, Hidden
Professional
The client wanted Emmi to produce artwork to blur old and new and guide people to the right floor after a 19th-century heritage building was converted into a nursery.
The illustrations create a floor-to-floor narrative; each level is a mini‑ecosystem with different animals, helping children identify the floors and engaging all passers-by.
Emmi Jormalainen is a Helsinki-based visual artist and illustrator.
Click Here To See The Full Project
Katarzyna Bogucka: Olympians’ Mural
Professional
My task was to create a mural design for the Polish Olympians Primary School in Ciechocinek.
My goal was to showcase as many athletes as possible. It wasn’t possible to showcase all the Olympians. The selection process was the most challenging. I focused on a variety of sports, which heightened the dynamism of the illustrations, which was crucial for me.
The colors are subdued, a result of the choice of anti-slip, eco-friendly paints used in the project.
Katarzyna Bogucka is an illustrator based in Poland
Click Here To See The Full Project
Delphine Meier: Daycare Mural
Professional
The illustrator painted this mural to turn a plain backstreet into a bright, welcoming path for daycare children. It adds colour and joy to their daily walk to the park, making a simple urban space feel much friendlier for kids.
Delphine is an illustrator based in Canada
Click Here To See The Full Project
Saskia Blake:
Walking Wild – Ben Ledi
New Talent
This project is to encourage walkers to notice the mountain, and to consider what your relationship to the land is. Walking in Scotland is not a Neutral act.
The right to roam, wasn’t always ours, it was a hard-won battle. Now to walk freely through the mountains and moorlands of Scotland is a quiet declaration of belonging.
As you walk through the rain, wind, snow and shifting light, you experience what it means to belong, to and be part of a landscape.
Saskia Blake is an illustrator based in the UK
Click Here To See The Full Project
Lauren Morsley: Garden Square Mural
Professional
Laura was commissioned by Garden Square in Orkney to design a statement mural outside their venue to welcome visitors. The mural was to represent Orkney in her contemporary style and reflect its rich history and traditions, Scottish folklore, and the vast abundance of nature in and around the islands. Laura then designed the mural to be a 3D layered installation piece. Creating a greater sense of depth and visual impact for the entrance, allowing visitors to walk alongside the characters as they enter.
Laura Morsley is an illustrator based in the UK
Click To See The Full Project Here
You can explore the full WIA2026 Shortlist and Illustrator Interviews on our Projects page..