Sobey Art Award – West Coast and Yukon
Gabi Dao
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Based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) nations, Vancouver artist Gabi Dao works across sculpture, installation, film and sound. Dialogues within these works blur the space between historical and contemporary by interweaving conceptions of distance, intimacy, inheritance and narrative, at times building specifically upon personal and familial experiences. Key themes include entangled subjectivities, belief systems, displacement, linearity and power plays that are challenged and presented in multiple truths. Her work has been exhibited at numerous galleries and festivals in Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles and Rotterdam.
Excerpts from the Domestic Cinema Ch.1 and Ch.2, 2019, video and sculpture installation, beaded curtains, carpet, cushioned seating, dimensions variable. Installation view at Audain Gallery/SFU Galleries, Vancouver. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. ©Gabi Dao, courtesy of artist. Photo: Blaine Campbell
Excerpts from the Domestic Cinema Ch.1 and Ch.2, 2019, video and sculpture installation, beaded curtains, carpet, cushioned seating, dimensions variable. Installation view at Audain Gallery/SFU Galleries, Vancouver. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery. © Gabi Dao — Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Blaine Campbell
Many, Looks, Work, 2017, acrylic nails and accessories, gelatin, makeup, dirt, other bits of detritus, copper wire, mica, clay, jumper cables, jewellery chain, chain from broken lighting fixture, false eyelashes, nail polish, sewing pins, dried white prune, dried flowers, knotty pine, dimensions variable. Installation view at Unit 17, Vancouver. © Gabi Dao — Courtesy of the artist and Unit 17. Photo: Luke Domanski
Sharona Franklin
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Sharona Franklin is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist, writer, designer, consultant and advocate. Working from a lived experience of physical, psychological and cognitive disabilities, her practice explores radical therapies, cybernetic craft, bio-citizenship, the pharmaco-industrial complex, and social interdependence.
Franklin’s methodologies advance access, while also building social disability communities online. She is an ambassador for the Arthritis Society, and is currently working on solo exhibitions at La Maison de Rendez-Vous in Brussels and the MIT List Centre in Boston, while also consulting with Remai Modern in Saskatoon to create Relaxed Tours: accessible gallery tours for institutional art spaces.
Tellurian Dinner (detail) from the series The Pandemic is a Portal, 2020. field hay, vinyl wall decals, wood, glass, polyblend tablecloth, papier mâché, gelatin, foraged botanicals, medicinal herbs, various pharmaceuticals, construction site remnants, nuts and bolts, industrial metal hardware, biopharmaceutical syringes, flowers, dimensions variable. Installation view at Simon Fraser University Galleries, Vancouver. © Sharona Franklin — Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Rachel Topham
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Mycoplasma Altar, 2020, gelatin powder, daisies, foraged rose thorns, baby’s breath, juniper berry, metal nuts, kidney beans, amoxicillin pills, hydrochloroquine pills, methotrexate pills, antibodies in glass syringe vials, tapioca pearls, sunflower seeds, metal buttons, wood, plaster, acrylic and papier mâché, 43.8 × 43.8 × 43.8 cm; plinth: 40.64 × 43.8 × 43.8 cm; overall dimensions: 83.82 × 43.8 × 43.8 cm. Installation view at King's Leap, New York. © Sharona Franklin — Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Stephen Faught
Julian Yi-Zhong Hou
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Julian Yi-Zhong Hou was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory, and currently resides in Vernon, on the unceded land of the Syilx peoples of the Okanagan Nation. His work has been the focus of solo and group exhibitions at Soon.tw in Montreal, and 8-eleven in Toronto, and Artspeak and the Vancouver Art Gallery in Vancouver.
His most recent work, Grass Drama, has been presented in parts at Malaspina Printmakers (2021) and the Contemporary Art Gallery (2020) in Vancouver, Cassandra Cassandra (2019) in Toronto, and in the experimental art publication Charcuterie 4: very tactile present (2018). In 2017, he won the City of Vancouver’s Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Visual Artist.
Emily Neufeld
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Emily Neufeld lives and works on the unceded territories of the Squamish, TsleilWaututh and Musqueam peoples. Her practice investigates place, and the layers of memory and psychic history that accumulate in our material world. She is committed to examining her own Mennonite and Scottish colonial histories towards understanding her relationship to this place as Indigenous land.
Recent solo exhibitions include Prairie Invasions: A Lullaby at the Richmond Art Gallery (2020), and Before Demolition at the Burrard Arts Foundation (2017), both in Greater Vancouver, Before Demolition: Tides at Eyelevel in Halifax (2019) and Motherlands at The Pole in The Hague, Netherlands (2019). Neufeld has created and participates in community sharing gardens, and sees land as fundamental to her research process. She received her B.F.A. from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2013.
Before Demolition (Trenton Place Room), 2017, adhesive photographs, wood trim and lumber, door, ducting, ceiling tile, wood, ferns, ceramic tray, concrete, ceiling tile, curtain, insulation, carpet, under cushion, soil, wood, lath, drywall, plaster, variable dimensions. Installation view at Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver. © Emily Neufeld — Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Dennis Ha
Anne Riley and T’uy’t'annat-Cease Wyss
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Anne Riley and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss’ collaborative artistic practice began in 2016, and honours intergenerational relationships, learning/unlearning, mentorship, Indigenous stewardship and a deep consideration of land, place, and history.
Anne Riley is an Indigiqueer multidisciplinary artist of Slavey Dene/German guest origin from Fort Nelson First Nation, living on the unceceded territories of the xwməәθkwəәy̓ əәm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səәl̓ílwəәtaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations.
T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss is an ethnobotanist, media artist, educator, and activist of Skwxwu7mesh/Stó:lō/ Hawaiian/Swiss ancestry. Wyss has been traditionally trained by Indigenous knowledge-keepers and Elders, and has been a practicing media artist for more than twenty-five years, presenting nationally and internationally.
