Sobey Art Award – Prairies and North
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Divya Mehra
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Divya Mehra incorporates found artifacts and ready-made objects as active signifiers of resistance in a multitude of forms, including photo, video, film, sculpture, print, drawing, performance, installation and advertising. Her works serve as reminders of the difficult realities of displacement, loss, neutrality and oppression.
Recent projects include From India to Canada and back to India (There is nothing I can possess which you cannot take away) (2020), in which Mehra’s research for the exhibition led to the repatriation and institutional deaccession of a looted artifact from India. Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University.
Photo: Jason Simmons
Katherine Boyer
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Katherine Boyer (Métis/Settler) is a multidisciplinary artist, whose work is focused on methods bound to textile arts and the handmade — primarily woodworking and beadwork. Her art and research encompass personal family narratives, entwined with Métis history, material culture, and architectural spaces (human-made and natural).
Boyer’s work often explores boundaries between two opposing things, in an effort to better understand both sides of a perceived dichotomous identity. This manifests in long, slow and laborious processes that attempt to unravel and better understand history, environmental influences, and personal memories.
Katherine Boyer, Pockets to Hold Resistance and Penitence, 2019.
Monk’s cloth, cotton, wool, 96.5 x 45.7 cm each. Collection of the Artist. © Katherine Boyer. Photo: Lindsey Bond
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Katherine Boyer, A bundle . . . of gathered . . ., 2021. Seed beads on stroud cloth, maple and oak 1x1s, 40.6 x 30.5 cm. Collection of the Artist. © Katherine Boyer. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Anna Binta Diallo
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Anna Binta Diallo is a Canadian multidisciplinary artist who investigates memory and nostalgia to create unexpected narratives around identity. Her work has been shown nationally — including exhibitions in Brandon, Winnipeg, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver — and internationally in Finland, Taiwan and Germany.
In 2021, Diallo was awarded the Barbara Sphor Memorial Prize from the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and received an inaugural Black Designers of Canada Award of Excellence that same year. She has an MFA from Transart Institute for Creative Research in Berlin, and an Honours BFA from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art, where she currently teaches.
Anna Binta Diallo, Wanderings, 2020. Collages printed on Photo Tex™ adhesive fabric, aluminum composite, MDF, dimensions variable. © Anna Binta Diallo. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography for Access Gallery
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Anna Binta Diallo, From The Earth We Grow (Female figure holding child), 2021. Collages printed on Russian plywood, 81.3 x 208.28 cm. © Anna Binta Diallo. Photo: Courtesy of the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (VAC), documented by Laura Findlay
Photo: Cateri Cardinal Dodginghorse
tīná gúyáńí
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tīná gúyáńí (meaning “deer road” in Tsuut'ina) is a two-person artist collective from Guts’ists’i (Calgary). Founded in 2019, the collective is comprised of the parent/child Tsuut’ina duo, Glenna Cardinal and seth cardinal dodginghorse.
In 2014, they were forcibly removed from their homes and ancestral land on the Tsuut’ina Nation Reserve, for construction of the multilane Southwest Calgary Ring Road. Their multidisciplinary practice has explored their connection to land, and the effects of the environmental/psychological damage caused by the Ring Road. Their work is an act of cultural preservation, and a protest against ongoing settler colonialism.
Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Anna Hawkins
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Anna Hawkins works primarily in moving-image and installation. Her work centres around the ways that images, gestures and language are circulated and transformed online, as well as the impact of technology on the intimate spheres of daily life.
Hawkins’ recent exhibitions include solo projects at Dazibao in Montreal, the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, The Bows in Calgary, the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides in St-Jérôme, Eastern Edge in St. John’s, and Centre Clark in Montreal. She is an Assistant Professor in Studio Art at MacEwan University on Treaty 6 Territory ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ (Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Edmonton, Alberta.
