Sobey Art Award 2019 – Ontario
Stephanie
Comilang
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Artist Stephanie Comilang divides her practice between Toronto and Berlin. Her documentary-based works create narratives that look at how our understandings of mobility, capital and labour on a global scale are shaped through various cultural and social factors.
Her work has been shown at the Ghost:2561 Bangkok video and performance art triennale, SALTS Basel, UCLA, International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the Asia Art Archive in America (New York). She received her BFA from the Ontario College of Art and Design.
Visit the artist’s website.
Through what she calls science-fiction documentaries, Stephanie Comilang speaks to how the world is increasingly experienced through technology. By using the point of view of a drone — the ancient sentient being Paraiso who acts as both recorder and protagonist — the artist shows how communities, made up of mainly migrant women, carve out space in locations that are never really home. The jury was impressed by her ambitious practice which engages in a complex manner with what has been lost through colonization.
Photo: Anne Amores
Patrick
Cruz
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Patrick Cruz is a Filipino-Canadian artist living and working in Toronto and Quezon City, Philippines. Cruz studied painting at the University of the Philippines Diliman, and earned a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, and an MFA from the University of Guelph.
In 2015, Cruz won the national title for the 17th annual RBC Canadian Painting Competition, and has presented his work across North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. Cruz is the founder of Kamias Special Projects, an artist-run space in Quezon City.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Brendan
Fernandes
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Nairobi-born Canadian artist Brendan Fernandes works at the intersection of dance and the visual arts. Based in Chicago, his projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest and other forms of collective movement, incorporating elements such as ballet, queer dancehall and political protest. Brendan is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2007), a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship (2014), and a 2010 Sobey Art Award nominee. His projects have been presented at venues including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Getty Museum (Los Angeles), and the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa). He is currently artist-in-residence and a faculty member at Northwestern University.
Photo: Luke Davis
Laurie
Kang
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Laurie Kang is an artist living in Toronto. Kang has exhibited in North America at Interstate Projects and Topless (New York); The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Cooper Cole, 8-11, The Loon, Gallery TPW, Franz Kaka (Toronto), Carl Louie (London), and L’inconnue (Montreal). International venues include Wroclaw Contemporary Museum and Raster Gallery (Poland), Camera Austria, and Tag Team (Norway).
She has been artist-in-residence at Rupert (Lithuania), Tag Team (Norway), The Banff Centre (Alberta), and Interstate Projects (Brooklyn). She holds an MFA from the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College.
Photo: Kieran Adams
Erdem
Taşdelen
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Erdem Taşdelen is a Turkish-Canadian artist based in Toronto. His practice is rooted in conceptualism, and involves a range of media including installation, video, sculpture, sound and artist books. His diverse projects bring self-expression into question within the context of culturally learned behaviours, and he often draws upon unique historical narratives to address the complexities of current sociopolitical issues. Taşdelen completed his MFA at Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2010.
Photo: Sarah Bodri
