As 2025 draws to a close, Colossal magazine has curated a compelling collection of its most memorable stories, showcasing the remarkable breadth of contemporary creativity that continues to captivate audiences worldwide. This annual retrospective highlights how artists, photographers, and creators are pushing boundaries across multiple disciplines, from traditional crafts to cutting-edge digital installations. The selected works demonstrate a shared commitment to exploring themes of identity, environmental connection, and the transformative power of art in public spaces. These narratives collectively reveal how creative expression serves as both a mirror to our current moment and a window into possible futures.
Among the standout visual arts features, Los Angeles-based artist Roberto Benavidez has reimagined the traditional piñata as a sophisticated sculptural medium, crafting uncanny papier-mâché creatures that explore complex intersections of race, sexuality, and colonial history. His intricate sculptures, particularly those inspired by Hieronymus Bosch's fantastical beasts, elevate a folk tradition into fine art while maintaining its subversive edge. Meanwhile, Chicago artist Nick Cave unveiled a nearly twenty-six-foot bronze sculpture titled "Amalgam" that stands as a powerful statement on resistance and oppression. Cave's work, which also includes monumental beaded sculptures and mosaic installations in New York subway stations, consistently asks how materials can actively engage communities and foster dialogue around social justice issues.
Photography took center stage in several celebrated projects this year. Dutch photographer Marcel Heijnen continued his documentation of Istanbul's famous feral cats, capturing intimate portraits that reveal the deep bond between urban residents and their unofficial feline neighbors. These images showcase how cities like Istanbul, Athens, and Valletta have integrated stray animals into their cultural identity. In a historic moment for photographic preservation, more than 7,500 prints and negatives by pioneering American photographer Alice Austen returned to her Staten Island home, Clear Comfort, after being held by a local historical society. This landmark acquisition ensures that Austen's groundbreaking documentary work from the late 19th and early 20th centuries remains accessible to future generations. The Pure Street Photography Awards also recognized photographers who excel at capturing fleeting moments of urban chaos and coincidence, celebrating the split-second timing required to immortalize everyday drama.
Performance and public art installations created some of the year's most immersive experiences. The Bavarian Junior Ballet presented a brilliant performance that brought new attention to the Bauhaus movement's overlooked contributions to dance, particularly the work of Oskar Schlemmer, who translated the school's functional design principles into groundbreaking choreography. In Times Square, Chicago-based artist Yuge Zhou transformed ninety-two screens into a synchronized digital canvas with "Trampoline Color Exercise," a monumental video collage featuring hundreds of gymnasts whose movements created undulating patterns of abstract color. The installation celebrated global unity through athleticism and became a mesmerizing focal point in one of the world's busiest public spaces.
The intersection of art and scientific discovery yielded extraordinary results, most notably when researchers filmed a juvenile colossal squid for the first time during a Schmidt Ocean Institute expedition to the South Sandwich Islands. This breakthrough footage, captured during a thirty-five-day trek on the research vessel Falkor (too), revealed new hydrothermal vents and coral gardens while confirming the existence of species previously known only through speculation. The discovery highlighted how much remains unknown about our planet's most remote ecosystems and demonstrated the role that visual documentation plays in advancing scientific understanding. Such work bridges the gap between empirical research and public engagement, making the wonders of deep-sea exploration accessible to broader audiences.
These diverse stories collectively illustrate how contemporary creators are responding to our complex global landscape through varied mediums and approaches. From Yuji Agematsu's daily practice of arranging street debris into tiny sculptures since 1996, to Stephanie Shih's ceramic explorations of domestic disillusionment, artists are finding profound meaning in both mundane rituals and grand gestures. The preservation of Ron Gittins's one-of-a-kind Minotaur Room near Liverpool, saved from demolition, reminds us of the importance of protecting idiosyncratic artistic visions. As Colossal's editors note, sharing these stories is both a joy and a privilege, reflecting a commitment to independent arts publishing that amplifies voices and visions that might otherwise go unnoticed in mainstream cultural discourse.
