Five artistic visions propel prestigious Sobey Art Award exhibition
On view from October 28, 2022, to March 12, 2023
Five visual artists shortlisted for Canada’s most prestigious art award present new and thought-provoking contemporary works to the public at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) starting on October 28, 2022, for the Sobey Art Award exhibition, on view until March 12, 2023. The five artists will be at the NGC this Saturday, October 29, to meet with the visitors in the exhibition space from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. ET, as part of the Gallery’s Open House. Admission will be free from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.
The 2022 Sobey Art Award exhibition invites audiences to experience a range of artworks, spanning multiple artistic mediums, including photography, sculpture, performance, painting, and video installations. This year’s shortlisted Sobey Art Award finalists are Krystle Silverfox, (West Coast and Yukon), Divya Mehra (Prairies and North), Azza El Siddique (Ontario), Stanley Février (Quebec), and Tyshan Wright (Atlantic).
“These five powerful artistic voices hail from every region in Canada, and their works, practices, and artistic visions show the strength and impact of contemporary art on Canadian society,” said Angela Cassie, Interim Director and CEO, National Gallery of Canada. “We are thrilled to partner with the Sobey Art Foundation on this Award and Exhibition and invite communities into the gallery to view these dynamic works, and help celebrate these phenomenal artists.”
“The Board of the Sobey Art Foundation congratulates these five inspiring artists shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award,” said Bernard Doucet, Executive Director, The Sobey Art Foundation. “For over 20 years the Sobey Art Foundation has been proud to observe the practices of Canadian visual artists through this award, and we are excited to celebrate their exceptional work at the National Gallery of Canada.”
“The bold artistic visions of the five finalists begin from particularities of time and place to engage in pertinent global conversations,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director of Curatorial Initiatives, National Gallery of Canada, and Chair of the 2022 Sobey Art Award Jury. “Their works intertwine various media, materials and perspectives in distinctive ways to reflect on past realities and imagine possible futures.”
This exhibition is rooted in the lived experience of the shortlisted artists, and the work on display reflects their diverse backgrounds and unique ways of seeing, thinking and being in the world, expanding on what it means to be a “Canadian” artist working on Turtle Island. The multidisciplinary projects encompass a range of creative practices, from performance to activism, installation, sculpture, photography and institutional critique.
The five artists shortlisted for the 2022 Sobey Art Award are:
West Coast & Yukon: Krystle Silverfox
Prairies & North: Divya Mehra
Ontario: Azza El Siddique
Quebec: Stanley Février
Atlantic: Tyshan Wright
About the Sobey Art Award
Globally recognized as one of the world’s most generous privately funded prizes for contemporary visual artists, the Sobey Art Award is a catalyst that propels the careers of Canadian artists of all ages through financial support, an exhibition highlighting the practices of the five shortlisted artists, as well as national and international recognition.
Presented annually, the Sobey Art Award provides significant financial recognition and the $400,000 prize money is divided among the 25 nominated artists: $100,000 for the winner, $25,000 for the four shortlisted finalists, and $10,000 each for the long-listed artists.
A jury of experienced curators, including an international juror, select 25 artists from the submitted nominations—five from each designated region of Canada—for the long list. One artist from each region is then selected by the jury for the shortlist.
The winner of the 2022 Sobey Art Award will be announced at a celebration hosted at the National Gallery of Canada on November 16, 2022. The exhibition is presented with the support of the Sobey Art Foundation.
About the National Gallery of Canada
Ankosé — Everything is Connected — Tout est relié
The National Gallery of Canada is dedicated to amplifying voices through art and extending the reach and breadth of its collection, exhibitions program, and public activities to represent all Canadians, while centering Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Ankosé—an Anishinaabemowin word that means Everything is Connected—reflects the Gallery’s mission to create dynamic experiences that open hearts and minds, and allow for new ways of seeing ourselves, one another, and our diverse histories, through the visual arts. The NGC is home to a rich contemporary Indigenous international art collection, as well as important collections of historical and contemporary Canadian and European Art from the 14th to 21st centuries. Founded in 1880, the National Gallery of Canada has played a key role in Canadian culture for more than a century. To find out more about the Gallery’s programming and activities visit gallery.ca and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. #Ankose #EverythingIsConnected #ToutEstRelié.
About the Sobey Art Foundation
The Sobey Art Foundation was established in 1981 with the mandate to carry on the work of entrepreneur and business leader, the late Frank H. Sobey, who was a dedicated collector of investment quality Canadian art. The Sobey Art Foundation continues the work begun by Frank Sobey, preserving representative examples of 19th and 20th century Canadian art. The Sobey Art Award, started by the Foundation, ran in 2002, 2004, 2006 before becoming annual in 2007.
-30-
For media only: For more information, images, or to set up an interview, please contact:
Josée-Britanie Mallet
Senior Officer, Media and Public Relations
National Gallery of Canada
[email protected]
Denise Siele
Senior Manager Communications
National Gallery of Canada
[email protected]
***
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Stanley Février employs strategies of institutional critique to bring an end to the art worlds exclusionary institutional practices. Azza El Siddique constructs a multidisciplinary environment that encourages reflection on the ephemeral nature of physical and spiritual experience. In her sculpture and photography, Krystle Silverfox explores Indigenous feminism, decolonization and connections to the land. With his traditional craft and contemporary art practice, Tyshan Wright connects past and present narratives of Jamaican Maroon experience in diaspora. Through research and contemporary art, Divya Mehra exposes racism, cultural theft and colonial entitlement in museum collections, calling for meaningful restitution of stolen cultural artifacts.
KRYSTLE SILVERFOX
Vancouver, British Columbia, 1984
Krystle Silverfox explores Indigenous feminism, de-colonialism, lived experience and connections to the land through sculpture and photography. Silverfox was raised in Vancouver, away from her ancestral homeland of Selkirk First Nation (Pelly Crossing, Yukon). Her work—which often incorporates copper, concrete, beads and Hudson’s Bay point blankets—expresses layered meanings within Indigenous and colonial viewpoints. Cut blankets allude to the breaking of colonial ties (the Hudson’s Bay Company once operated a trading post at Fort Selkirk) and evoke Potlatch protocols as they symbolically affirm kinship ties between clans. Her use of copper references the mines that have gouged the Northern Tutchone lands. Silverfox’s visually striking metaphors unravel and grapple with the hard truths of Indigenous and settler-Canadian histories.
All That Glitters is Not Gold... 2019
HBC wool blanket, cedar frame, copper pennies
Collection of the artist
Copper + Concrete 2022
HBC wool blanket, concrete, copper wire
Collection of the artist
Landmarks 2022
inkjet prints
Collection of the artist
DIVYA MEHRA
Winnipeg, Manitoba, 1981
Divya Mehra’s research and conceptual artistic practice takes shape through a variety of media, including sculpture, installation, photography, video and text. A delicate articulation takes place through the artist’s critical stance toward the archives and operations of predominantly white institutions, questioning often overlooked aspects—acquisition policies, titles, wall paint, museum display furniture—through her sharp and satirical focus. Central to this installation is Mehra’s most recent multiple: a cinematic sandbag perched upon a British stone pedestal, pointing to the potential for material change and the legacy of artifacts looted through colonial violence now held in Western public institutional collections. Through her artworks Mehra refuses to allow the erasure of difficult realities amongst diasporic communities, and calls out the nation-state and the systems of oppression it upholds.
Afterlife of Colonialism, a reimagining of Power: It’s possible that the Sun has set on your Empire OR Why your voice does not matter: Portrait of an Imbalanced, and yet contemporary diasporic India vis-à-vis Colonial Red, Curry Sauce Yellow, and Paradise Green, placed neatly beneath these revived medieval forms: The Challenges of entering a predominantly White space (Can you get this in the gift shop?) where all Women and Magical Elephants may know this work, here in your Winnipeg, among all my Peers, desiring to be both seen and see the loot, through this Jungle Vine camouflage, celebrating an inheritance of loss through occupation of these outmoded spaces 2018–22
PVC-coated fabric, acrylic paint, plastic and electric components
Purchased 2019 (48651)
This “bouncy castle” attempt at the Taj Mahal is a commentary on how the 17th-century Mughal mausoleum has been reduced to one of many problematic signifiers representing the South Asian diaspora in the West. From its inception, the work’s title has evolved to reflect its current context. Playful and inviting, but off-limits to visitor interaction within this colonial institutional space, Mehra’s sculpture asserts its presence with sound while requiring viewers to confront their complicated relationships to the subject matter.
There is nothing you can possess which I cannot take away (Not Vishnu: New Ways of Darśana) 2020
coffee, sand, chamois, leather cord, metal, edition 1 of 10, British cast stone pedestal
MacKenzie Art Gallery (2020-4)
At the MacKenzie Art Gallery in 2019, Mehra’s research led to the correct identification and repatriation of a looted artifact from India: a stone carving of Annapurna, the Hindu goddess of nourishment. To address the gap in the museum’s collection, Mehra produced a pouch alluding to the film Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark, in which Jones steals an idol and leaves a bag of sand in its place. Following Mehra’s initiation of this restitution, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi claimed the political action as his own, erasing the artist from the narrative.
Returnism 2022
vinyl
Courtesy of the artist and the MacKenzie Art Gallery
At the MacKenzie Art Gallery, on a shelf marked “Oriental Antiquities,” a cavity carved for Annapurna now holds Mehra’s artwork. Her facilitation of the statue’s return marked an extraordinary precedent: rarely realized, divestment and repatriation are tangible steps that predominantly white institutions can take towards rectifying the fetishization of and theft from other cultures. This work’s title refers to former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s flippant response when asked about repatriating the Koh-i-Noor diamond to India: “They’re not having that back. I certainly don’t believe in returnism, as it were. I don’t think that’s sensible.”
A reasonably held belief that a “moral claim” exists 2022
letterpress on postcards from the National Gallery of Canada Boutique, edition 1 of 4
Courtesy of the artist
Here, in advance of his coronation, Mehra asks King Charles III to return the Koh-i-Noor Diamond to India. Rumoured it will be worn by Queen Consort Camilla at the coronation, the diamond was ceded to the British Royal Family after the British East India Company seized it from Duleep Singh, the 13-year-old Maharajah of the Punjab, in 1849 with the annexation of the independent Sikh kingdom. This act of theft secured what was arguably the most valuable object in South Asia. The circumstances under which the British acquired the gem are a potent reminder of the lasting effects of colonial debt and devastation. To date, the Crown has rejected all claims for the Koh-i-Noor’s repatriation—a dismissiveness attributed to the colonial understanding of loot and property transnationally. Mehra wrote her appeal to the monarch on a National Gallery of Canada’s gift shop postcard depicting a painting by Canadian landscape painter Lawren Harris, whose work has been implicated in the colonial project of this country, also built on a painful legacy of stolen land and resources.
AZZA EL SIDDIQUE
Khartoum, Sudan, 1984
Azza El Siddique constructs multi-sensory environments that encourage reflection on spirituality, entropy and the ephemeral nature of experience. Informed by the ancient history of present-day Sudan, including Egyptian and Nubian mythology, the artist’s large-scale installations embody her curiosity about the ever-changing physical world and the possibilities of worlds unseen. Measure of One invites its own metamorphosis through an interaction of water, clay and steel. Water washes over unfired clay vessels at regular intervals, altering or entirely disintegrating their forms. The mixture of eroding clay and water joins a cyclical path of destruction and renewal, forming new shapes. These processes are girded within a spare steel structure that frames a space for visitors to pause and dream.
Measure of One 2020
steel, expanded steel, water, unfired slip clay, slow-drip irrigation system, EPDM pond liner, cement bricks
Collection of the artist
STANLEY FÉVRIER
Port-au-Prince, Haïti, 1976
Interdisciplinary artist Stanley Février employs strategies of institutional critique to expose discrimination and cultural erasure in the art world. Through his actions, he diverts decision-making power and creates spaces where people from historically marginalized and racialized groups feel a sense of agency. His goal is to initiate radical change by urging museums to engage in constructive dialogue with these communities. In his research and performance-oriented works, Février explores identity issues, violence and inequality, addressing the root causes of this systemic imbalance as he champions culturally diverse artistic practices in Québec and Canadian societies. The End of a World is the culmination of years of investigation and militant performative actions in pursuit of a fairer museum system. This installation embodies the death of old institutional practices and marks the beginning of a new era in Canadian art history.
IT’S HAPPENING NOW 2019
views of a performance at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, printed 2022
Photos: Michaëlle Sergile & Mike Patten
The End of a World 2017–2022
plaster, wood, glass, electric candles, 2 metal votive candle stands, funerary wreath
It’s Happening Now was a guerrilla action challenging the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal to recognize Québécois artists of colour. Wearing black bodysuits, Février and his collaborators shackled fifty years’of the institution’s annual reports to their ankles before shredding them in the museum’s lobby in a collective call for a new chapter in Quebec art history. Across from the Gallery’s Library and Archives—the repository for its own annual reports—Février’s sombre field of “tombstones”is a wry elegy to a darker past. Collection of the artist
TYSHAN WRIGHT
Accompong, St. Elizabeth, Jamaica, 1980
Halifax-based Tyshan Wright works at the intersection of contemporary art and traditional Maroon culture and craft. Wright is a keeper of the heritage of Jamaican Maroons, descendants of people of African origin who evaded enslavement and created self-sustaining communities. His multimedia installation, Maroon Camp, unites the present with past narratives of Maroon experience in diaspora—from resistance of the transatlantic slave trade in the 17th century, to the Maroons’ exile from Trelawny Town, Jamaica, to Nova Scotia in 1796. Here Wright recognizes the enduring cultural influence of the Trelawny Town Maroons’ time in Atlantic Canada, a region still home to many of their descendants. Wright champions a resurgence of his ancestral language, spirituality and material culture.
Maroon Landing 2022
acrylic, reproduced archival documents
Collection of the artist
These redacted reproductions of a letter from Sir John Wentworth challenge the Lieutenant Governor’s account of the arrival of 549 Maroons, exiled by British Colonizers from Trelawny Town, Jamaica, at Halifax Harbour in July 1796. They were camped at Citadel Hill and later settled in the Black Loyalist communities of Preston and Boydville, now Maroon Hill. Resisting forced assimilation in this new colonial context, many Maroons departed in 1800 for what is now Sierra Leone, West Africa.
Cimarron 2016
carved cow horn
Collection of the artist
After their exile to Nova Scotia, Jamaican Maroons were denied their spiritual practices and ceremonial instruments, including their most sacred symbol: the abeng. This wind instrument appears here in its most uninhibited, traditional form. Its title derives from the Spanish cimarrón, meaning “wild,” or “untamed,” widely considered the source of the word “Maroon,” describing enslaved persons who evaded capture. This work reclaims the language of the colonizer as it honours the autonomy Maroons obtained by resisting slavery.
Gumbe IV 2021
wood, goat skin, rope
Myal II 2022
carved cow horns, wood, Maroon beads, crocus bag
Bass II 2022
oak barrel, crocus bag, goat skin, deer skin
Drum Stick and Stand 2022
oak, crocus bag, pine cones
Wright recreates ceremonial instruments used to achieve myal, a sacred ritual of communing with ancestors. In Kromanti, the mother tongue of the Jamaican Maroons, myal encompasses facets of spiritual practice. Played together in ceremony, these instruments foster communication, healing and joy. Drums are used to pay respect to and communicate with the ancestors. Myal II, Wright’s contemporary take on an abeng, echoes these intergenerational connections: the small horn represents Maroons of today; the larger abeng an ancestor.
Collection of the artist.
Between Slavery and Sovereignty 2022
wood, deer skin, Maroon beads, crocus bag, rope, pine cones
Collection of the artist
Through the creation of ceremonial objects, Wright facilitates the connection between past and future, and between earthly and spiritual dimensions. In this contemporary Jamaican Maroon “printing” drum and pair of vessels for pouring libation, the artist considers how the Maroons navigated the space between slavery and sovereignty in a new society by connecting with their ancestors through myal.
Yenkunkun Pikibo 2022
wood, rope, goat skin, canvas, digital video with sound, 2 min, 20 sec.
Collection of the artist
Visitors are invited to view the home video Yenkunkun Pikibo from the traditional “bench” drums inside the tent. Depicting Wright and his children—Jamaican Maroons in present-day Canada—the work takes its title from a Kromanti phrase, shared by the artist, meaning “Cudjoe and Nanny pickney,” or “the children [of historic Maroon leaders] Nanny and Cudjoe.” Maroons exiled to Halifax in 1796 made their first homes inside army tents such as this one, pitched at Citadel Hill which is now a national historic site.
Hye Won Hye 2022
cow horn, wood, goat skin, rope, stones
Collection of the artist
Yaaba 2022
wood, cacoon seed
Collection of the artist
Here, the artist has placed works representing traditional Jamaican Maroon instruments into a fire pit, referencing the prohibited objects’ destruction in exile. Questioning their absence from the colonial historical record, Wright includes an unburned gumbe drum, proposing an alternate history where Maroons in Halifax created their sacred instruments from local forest products. In Yaaba, a bowl holds seeds of the cacoon vine, a plant used for camouflage during war. Prized by Maroons, the seeds are said to bring good fortune.