Sobey Art Award – 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.
Stephanie Comilang's films, which she calls “science fiction documentary,” explore how migrants create their own space, with certain films focused specifically on women. Her films collage multiple layers, in which agency is determined and experienced by migrants themselves through the use of various technologies. She addresses global capital, labour, trafficking and the disembodied body — often a narrator as a ghost or drone — which becomes a metaphor for the diaspora experience, whether forced, complicit, or urgent.
Comilang's work over the years reflects a communion between contemporary art and subcultures that are authentic and lived. She creates narrative devices to show invisibility, with a keen interest in how domestic space is formed within the public realm. Her work transmits a reflection of a future-now that is not necessarily dystopian, but one in which we all participate.
Photo: Anne Amores
Yesterday In The Years 1886 & 2017, 2017, two-channel video installation, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come To Me, Paradise), 2018, three-channel video installation, cardboard, variable dimensions. Courtesy of the artist and Ghost Foundation. Photo: Miti Ruangkritya
Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come To Me, Paradise), 2018, three-channel video installation, variable dimensions, film still, 25:44 min. Courtesy of the artist.
Lumapit Sa Akin, Paraiso (Come To Me, Paradise), 2018, three-channel video installation, variable dimensions, film still, 25:44 min. Courtesy of the artist.
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
Step Mother Tongue, 2019, india ink, clay, wood, variable dimensions. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Bite the Dog that Feeds You, 2014, acrylic, canvas, wood, glass, plaster, polyurethane, live plant, electric fan, led lights, variable dimensions. Photo: Dennis Ha
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
The Master and Form, 2018, live performance and scaffolding, variable dimensions. Photo: Brendan Meara/Courtesy of the Graham Foundation, Chicago. Dancers: Satoru Iwasaki, Yuha Kamoto, Andrea de Leon Rivera, Antonio Mannino, Leah Upchurch
Move In Place, 2015, digital C-print, 76.2 x 76.2 cm each, series of eight. African art images courtesy of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Justin and Elisabeth Lang Collection of African Art
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
Self Fermenting With from A Body Knots, 2018, stainless-steel mixing bowl, pigmented silicone, polymer clay, cast aluminum lotus roots, 60.9 x 60.9 x 17.8 cm. Photo: Jimmy Limit
A Body Knots at Gallery TPW, 2018, steel, airline cable, hardware, unfixed and unprocessed photographic paper and darkroom chemicals (continually light-sensitive), unfixed photograms (continually light-sensitive), Duratrans, magnets, variable dimensions. Photo: Jimmy Limit
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
The Curtain Sweeps Down at VOX Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal, 2018, mixed-media installation, variable dimensions. Photo: Michel Brunelle
The Quantified Self Poems (detail), 2016, series of twelve silkscreen prints, 66 x 101.6 cm each.