Since I have been obsessively exploring the results of the Sobey Art Awards in my research and sharing this with you in my posts, I thought I should also keep you up-to-date with the award’s latest shortlist.
In October, the National Gallery announced the shortlist of five artists for the 2023 Sobey Art Award. Last year the shortlist featured a roster of BIPOC artists (see “Diversity in Canadian Contemporary Art”). Identity is again a major highlight in this year’s selection. Métis artist, Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill was chosen to represent the West Coast and Yukon region and Calgary-based Inuvialuk artist, Kablusiak, the Prairies and North. Both artists were also nominated in 2019 with Kablusiak making the shortlist that year. New to the roster are Trinidadian-born, Michèle Pearson Clarke representing Ontario, Iranian-born Anahita Norouzi for Québec, and queer artist Séamus Gallagher for the Atlantic provinces. All five artists can be connected by a common thematic thread in that each produces work that explores and challenges notions of identity whether these are racial, gender-based, or related to nations and migration. As the text on the Award site sums up:
Rooted in lived experience, the artworks reflect the finalists’ diverse backgrounds and unique ways of seeing, thinking and being in the world.
Michèle Pearson Clarke’s installation presents the discomfort of inexperienced singers, pointing to the deeper lived anxieties felt by queer masculine women as they navigate socio-political landscapes. Séamus Gallagher casts a queer, non-binary lens on identities and habitations, fabricating and layering multiple realities through virtual and actual collage techniques. Métis artist Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill works across multiple media to draw out the political, historical and deeply personal contexts of everyday materials such as tobacco, blackberry juice and hair. Kablusiak explores dis/connections relating to Inuit Nunangat (homeland); the impacts of colonization on gender and the expression of sexuality; humour; and everyday life. Anahita Norouzi travels between Iran and Canada to research colonialism’s destructive legacies in Southwest Asia, and the impact of displacement – human and “other” – that results from cultural and resource exploitation.
Each of these shortlisted artists is awarded $25,000 and their work is presented in a group exhibition at the National Gallery in Ottawa. The exhibit opened on October 13 and runs until March 3, 2024. The final winner will be announced some time this month and will receive $100,000.
Here is a set of short videos on the shortlisted artists. Unfortunately, there is no People’s Choice Award so you can’t vote. You can, however, share your thoughts by leaving a comment below.