Sobey Art Award – Quebec

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Stanley Février

Stanley Février

Shortlisted artist
Katherine Melançon

Katherine Melançon

Joshua Schwebel

Joshua Schwebel

Michaelle Sergile

Michaëlle Sergile

Nico Williams

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ

 
Stanley Février

Photo: Jean Turgeon

Stanley Février
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Stanley Février is a multidisciplinary Quebec artist. He was a social worker before becoming a full-time artist — two practices that have become inextricably linked in his work. In 2018, he received an M.A. in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

To date, he has had nearly twenty-five solo exhibitions, and some twenty group exhibitions, in cities across Canada and around the world. His work is found in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. In 2020, he was awarded the Fourth MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award. He was also a teaching fellow at the Université de Montréal in 2020.

 

Stanley Février, Le travail d'Hercule [The Labours of Hercules], 2014. Digital prints.

Stanley Février, Le travail d'Hercule [The Labours of Hercules], 2014.
Digital prints, dimensions variable. © Stanley Février. Installation view from the exhibition Menm Vye Tintin. Les vies possibles [Same Old Shit: Possible Lives], at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ). Photo: MNBAQ, Idra Labrie

Stanley Février, Les vies possibles [Possible Lives], 2021. Video installation.

Stanley Février, Les vies possibles [Possible Lives], 2021. Video installation, dimensions variable. © Stanley Février. Installation view from the exhibition Menm Vye Tintin. Les vies possibles [Same Old Shit: Possible Lives], at the Musée d’art contemporain des Laurentides (MACLAU). Photo: MACLAU, Lucien Lisabelle

 
Katherine Melançon

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Katherine Melançon
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Katherine Melançon’s practice focuses on the nexus between the natural and the technological. More recently, her work has explored the agency of non-human living things — what would the world be, what would art be, if created by non-human beings. Often using scans of natural specimens as a starting point, these new “seeds” are planted in different materials, thereby exploring the flow of images in cycles of metamorphosis between physical and digital “soils.”

Melançon has an MFA from Central Saint Martins in London, UK, and a B.A. in Interactive Media from the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She lives and works in Montreal.

 

Katherine Melançon, Vers un parlement du vivant I [Towards a Parliament of the Living I ](Five-screen version), 2021.

Katherine Melançon, Vers un parlement du vivant I [Towards a Parliament of the Living I ] (Five-screen version), 2021. Plants (Anthurium andreanum, Crassula arborescens, Pilea peperomioides, Saxifraga stonolifera and Stromanthe sanguinea), soil, Raspberry Pi computer, sensors, grow lights, flat screens, animation created with 3D-capture technology, photogrammetry, 2-D scans, 2.44 x 5.8 m. © Katherine Melançon. Installation view at Galerie Elektra, 2021. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Katherine Melançon, Nature morte – Epiphyllum [Still Life – Epiphyllum], 2022.

Katherine Melançon, Nature morte – Epiphyllum [Still Life – Epiphyllum], 2022. Epiphyllum oxypetalum cactus, terracotta pots, jacquard tapestry (tencel, silk, polyester, conductive wire and yellow heat-sensitive ink), Arduino microcontroller, steel, light sensor, wi-fi, 2.13 × 4.57 m. © Katherine Melançon. Installation view at the Maison de la culture Plateau-Mont-Royal, 2022. Photo: Gabriel Fournier

 
Joshua Schwebel

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Joshua Schwebel
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Joshua Schwebel (he/him) is a trans artist based between Montreal (Tiohti:áke) and Berlin. Since graduating from NSCAD’s MFA program, Schwebel has become known for practicing a particularly direct form of situation-based institutional critique, undertaken through performances, withdrawals, delegated transactions, and impostors.

Selected solo exhibitions include presentations at Centre Clark (Montreal, 2021), piloto pardo (London, UK, 2021), Or Gallery (Vancouver, 2019), Kreuzberg Pavillon  (Berlin, 2019), the Fonderie Darling (Montreal, 2018), and Centrum (Berlin, 2017).

Schwebel was a participating fellow in the Art by Translation program’s inaugural year (2017), and has had residencies at AiR 351 (Lisbon), Laznia CCA (Gdansk), the Couvent des Récollets de Paris, the Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Rupert (Vilnius), Tadeusz Kantor Foundation (Krakow), Standards (Milan), and Where Where (Beijing), among others.

 

Joshua Schwebel, The Tenant, 2021.Performance project featuring nine local artists on a two-hour 5.5-kilometre pilgrimage from their new studios to their former space.

Joshua Schwebel, The Tenant, 2021. Performance project featuring nine local artists on a two-hour 5.5-kilometre pilgrimage from their new studios to their former space. © Joshua Schwebel. Photo: Paul Litherland

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Joshua Schwebel, The Employee, 2021. Year-long performance project incorporating a hired grant-writer and performer, administrative support structures, and twelve submitted applications (performer: Camille-Zoé Valcourt Synnott). © Joshua Schwebel. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Joshua Schwebel, The Employee, 2021.Year-long performance project incorporating a hired grant-writer and performer, administrative support structures, and twelve submitted applications (performer: Camille-Zoé Valcourt Synnott).

 

 
Michaelle Sergile

Photo: Benny Étienne

Michaëlle Sergile 
—

Michaëlle Sergile is an artist and independent curator, working primarily with archives, including texts and books reflecting the post-colonial period, from 1950 to the present day. Her artistic practice aims at understanding and rewriting the history of Black communities — more specifically, the history of women and marginalized peoples, through weaving.

Incorporating a medium often perceived as craft and categorized as feminine, the artist uses the language of weaving to explore the relationships of gender and race.  

 

Michaëlle Sergile, We Wear the Mask, 2019. Cloth woven in cotton, alpaca and acrylic.

 

Michaëlle Sergile, To Hold a Smile, 2022. Duvet, cotton, video projection (2019–2022).

Michaëlle Sergile, To Hold a Smile, 2022. Duvet, cotton, video projection (2019–2022), 167.6 x 243.8 cm. © Michaëlle Sergile. Installation view at the Musée d’art de Joliette. Photo: Paul Litherland

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Michaëlle Sergile, We Wear the Mask, 2019. Cloth woven in cotton, alpaca and acrylic. Wooden supports, sonogram on vinyl, dimensions variable. © Michaëlle Sergile. Installation view at Rad Hourani gallery. Photo: Sabrina Jolicoeur

 
Nico Williams

Photo: Cory Hunlin

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ
—

Nico Williams, ᐅᑌᒥᐣ is Anishinaabe and a member of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation community, currently working in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. He has a multidisciplinary and often collaborative practice that is centred around sculptural beadwork.

Williams is an active member within the urban Indigenous Montreal arts community, a board member for the Biennale d’Art Contemporain Autochtone, and a member of the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team. He has taught workshops at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NSCAD University, the Indigenous Art Centre, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, and Carleton University.

Williams’ practice has been featured by National Geographic and the CBC.

 

Nico Williams, Jcloth (side view), 2022. Glass beads.

Nico Williams, Jcloth (side view), 2022. Glass beads, 43 x 31.5 cm. © Nico Williams. Photo: Paul Litherland

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Nico Williams, Mots cachés (Orange) [Hidden Words (Orange)], 2020. Glass beads, thread, 52.7 x 8.9 x 2.5 cm. © Nico Williams. Photo: Richard-Max Tremblay

Nico Williams, Mots cachés (Orange) [Hidden Words (Orange)], 2020. Glass beads, thread.