PROGRAM
Mid-Career Awards
Past Recipients
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The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts
Bridget Moser (she/her)
Photo: Yuula Benivolski
Bridget Moser is a performance and video artist who combines strategies associated with prop comedy, experimental theatre, performance art, absurd literature, existential anxiety, and intuitive dance. She performs fragmented scenes that take multiple forms, including monologues, abstract body movement, and bizarre interactions with everyday inanimate objects. Her work deals with the trouble of constructing self-identity and the conditions of life under late capitalism.
Moser has presented work at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Remai Modern, le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Western Front, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, SPACES Cleveland, and Xing Raum, Bologna. Her work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, Frieze, Canadian Art, C Magazine, Art in America, and Artribune Italy, and she has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award. She holds a BFA, that she describes as “somewhat weathered and ancient,” from Concordia University. For the past 10 years, she has worked a day job at the top plastic surgery practice in Canada. She thanks Paul Tjepkema for unparalleled support and creative collaboration, Amy Ching-Yan Lam and Jon Pham McCurley for their labour and advocacy, and her family for its encouragement and care.
Section committee decision
The selection committee members attributed Moser’s win to unique brand of humour and her fresh contribution to Canadian art. Lesley Johnstone noted, “Moser’s practice is very smart, and she is in tune with what’s going on in the art world.” Similarly, Monique Régimbald-Zeiber said: “there is something desperate in her logorrhea that screams. She has a strong presence.”“I found Bridget's playful humour subversively distilled the darker critical position in her videos,” noted celebrated Canadian artist Suzy Lake.
The committee members also noted Moser’s dedication to performance art, which is challenging to publicize and monetize, and her raw approach to performance.
Performance stills: When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left (2022). Courtesy of the artist and Texas State Galleries. Photo: Madelynn Mesa.
“I am really honoured to receive this award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation and to join this list of previous recipients whose work I greatly admire, including brilliant performers like Rebecca Belmore and Maria Hupfield. I am so thankful to this group of esteemed selection committee members, many of whom have influenced my practice. Perhaps one strength of my work is its profound unprofitability, and to that end, this prize will substantially support its continued existence and evolution—a support for which I have immense gratitude.”
In 2015, Moser also won the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s annual William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists. The fact that this year’s selection committee felt that, only eight years after winning a prize for an emerging artist, Moser was deserving of this prestigious mid-career award, is a testament to The Hnatyshyn Foundation and its selection committees’ ability to recognize and support truly exceptional talent.
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence
Sharon Fortney (she/her)
Photo: Rebecca Blisset. Courtesy of the Museum of Vancouver, 2018.
Sharon Fortney is the Curator of Indigenous Collections and Engagement at the Museum of Vancouver.
“I have been working as a Curator since 2000 when I guest curated Sátet te síwes (Continuing Traditions) at the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Growing up in Victoria, my parents often took me to visit the RBCM (Royal British Columbia Museum) as a child. I didn’t know much about my Indigenous heritage at that time, but I recognized baskets in the displays as being the same style as ones in my grandparent’s home. This is how I learned that my mother’s family was Coast Salish.
In high school I did my work experience at the RBCM and afterwards decided I wanted to study archaeology. I was the first person in my family to attend university. Part way through my studies, I met my husband and moved to Calgary. This brought me to the Glenbow Museum, where I eventually started my museum career. I learned a lot about how to work with communities while I was there and was lucky to attend a culture camp on the Siksika Reserve organized by Clifford Crane Bear and the late Gerry Conaty.
Since then, I have worked contract projects for several museums, and First Nations, in the Greater Vancouver area. In 2017, I was offered a permanent position at the MOV (Museum of Vancouver). I like connecting with other Salish community members through my curatorial work. In this way I honor my grandmother’s memory. She was a survivor of the Kuper Island residential school. I want to make the places I work safe spaces for community members to explore their history and reconnect with lost belongings. It’s important to me that my work supports what communities are trying to achieve. Right now, I am undertaking ‘Knowledge Repatriation’ work by curating workshops about traditional knowledge no longer practiced in Vancouver, for members of the host nations. This involves working with knowledge holders from neighboring Salish communities to learn about harvesting materials and creating different types of belongings. I am learning beside my friends, and we are documenting our work for teaching others in their communities.”
Haida repatriation. Courtesy of Sharon Fortney and the Museum of Vancouver, 2019.
Selection committee decision
The selection committee found choosing a single curator to win this award was a massive challenge: so many are incredibly deserving of such recognition of their diligent and creative work in sharing contemporary art and diverse stories with the Canadian public. It was thus decided that an additional criterion would be added: who would most benefit from this show of support? Fortney operates within a publicly-funded institution with a local scope, with less visibility and less funds than many larger institutions. Yet, her curatorial practice facilitates deep community engagement with art and artifacts, and breaks down museological barriers. Additionally, her background in collections strengthens her curation. Fortney not only creates outstanding exhibitions; she brings art into communities beyond the art world canon.
Exhibition view: Acts of Resistance, 2020. Courtesy of Sharon Fortney and the Museum of Vancouver. Photo: Rebecca Blisset.
“I am thankful to the Hnatyshyn Foundation for their recognition of my curatorial work. I delayed my career for many years for family reasons, and at times I thought about giving up on the idea of being a curator. Being selected for this award was a powerful sign that I am where I need to be and doing what I need to do. I acknowledge the entire team at the Museum of Vancouver for creating a supportive environment that prioritizes community engagement, redress and decolonization.”
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Hajra Waheed
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Waheed’s multidisciplinary practice ranges from painting and drawing to video, sound, sculpture and installation. Amongst other issues, she explores the nexus between security, surveillance and the covert networks of power that structure lives, while also addressing the traumas and alienation of displaced subjects affected by legacies of colonial and state violence. Characterized by a distinct visual language and unique poetic approach, her works often use the ordinary as a means to convey the profound, and landscape as a medium to transpose human struggle and a radical politics of resistance and resilience. Waheed has participated in exhibitions worldwide including: Hum (2020) Portikus, Frankfurt (2020); Globale Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Lahore Biennial 02, Pakistan (2020); Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to Now, British Museum, London (2019); Hold Everything Dear, The Power Plant, Toronto (2019); 57th Venice Biennale, VIVA ARTE VIVA, Venice (2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2016); The Cyphers, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2016); Still Against the Sky, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2015); La Biennale de Montréal, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec (2014); Lines of Control, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY (2012) and (In) The First Circle, Antoni Tapies Foundation, Barcelona, ES (2012). She was a finalist for the 2016 Sobey Art Award and received the 2014 Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for outstanding achievement as a mid-career artist. Waheed’s works can be found in permanent collections including MOMA, New York; British Museum, London; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Art Institute of Chicago; Burger Collection, Zurich/Hong Kong and Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi.
Hum (2020), Installation view from Portikus, DE (11 Jul – 6 Sep 2020). Multi-channel sound installation with custom speaker casings, 36m 17s. Copyright: Courtesy of the Artist / Photo: Diana Pfammatter
"What a surprise to receive this news out of the blue on a day that seemed like most others. So much of our practice is carried out in the magic of quiet, solitary moments. I was incredibly humbled by and grateful for this kind gesture - to be suddenly tapped on the shoulder by peers and urged to look up for a moment, to be appreciated for what we do as artists, and to have acknowledged that what we do matters. This winding journey that is a life long practice, is not possible without the continued loving support of people and communities both near and far. This award is shared with all those I have had the great honour to collaborate with."
Michelle Jacques
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Michelle Jacques is the Head of Exhibitions and Collections and Chief Curator at Remai Modern, Saskatoon. Her curatorial work has consistently examined the intersections of contemporary practices with historical art and community engagement. Projects at Remai Modern include Ken Lum: Death and Furniture (co-curated with Johan Lundh, 2022) and Denyse Thomasos: just beyond (co-curated with Renee van de Avoird and Sally Frater, upcoming 2022-23), both co-organized with the Art Gallery of Ontario; Canoe, an exhibition exploring how works of art documenting the structure and usage of Indigenous vessels has played a role in carrying cultural knowledge forward; and The Middle of Everywhere, an exploration of the art of the Great Plains collaboratively developed by the Remai Modern curatorial team. Previously, she was Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, where she was responsible for guiding a curatorial and education program linking contemporary practices, ideas and issues to the Gallery's Emily Carr collection and other historical holdings and legacies. Over the course of her career, she has worked with numerous contemporary artists including Karma Clarke-Davis, Karen Henderson, Luis Jacob, Gwen MacGregor, Kori Newkirk, Jon Sasaki, Rodney Sayers and Emily Luce, and Hiraki Sawa and co-curated major retrospectives of the work of Anna Banana and Jock Macdonald. Before moving west, she held roles in the Contemporary and Canadian departments of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; was the Director of Programming at the Centre for Art Tapes in Halifax; and taught courses in writing, art history and curatorial studies at NSCAD University, University of Toronto Mississauga, and OCAD University. Jacques has served on numerous boards and committees, and is currently a director at large with Vtape and the Vice-President of Inclusion and Outreach with the Association of Art Museum Curators.
Ken Lum: Death and Furniture, co-curated with Johan Lundh, Remai Modern, 2022, photo: Carey Shaw.
"It is a profound honour to receive this award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation. Over the course of my career, my curatorial practice, while centred on contemporary art, has often incorporated or intersected with modern and historical practices and concerns. However, it has always been with the aim of growing the appreciation for today’s artists, and for making space for new audiences. I am so grateful that this work has been recognized by a jury of my esteemed colleagues."
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Isabelle Hayeur
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Isabelle Hayeur holds a MFA in visual arts from l'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She is known for her photographs and her experimental videos. She has also realized public art commissions, several site-specific video installations and photography books. Her work is situated within a critical approach to the environment, urban development and to social conditions. Since the late 1990s, she has been probing the territories she goes through to understand how our contemporary civilizations take over and fashion their environments. She is concerned about the evolution of places and communities in the neoliberal sociopolitical context we currently live in. She has exhibited in such galleries as the National Gallery of Canada, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, Today Art Museum in Beijing and Les Rencontres internationales de la photographie à Arles. Her artworks can be found in numerous public and private collections.
"I am very grateful and honoured to receive the Mid-Career Award 2021 Visual Art Award. My art practice is in complete effervescence at the moment and this award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation will allow me to continue to build on this creative momentum."
Heather Igloliorte
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Heather Igloliorte is an Inuk and Newfoundlander from Nunatsiavut. She has been an independent curator for sixteen years and is a founding member of GLAM Collective. She was the lead guest curator of INUA: Inuit Nunangat Ungammuaktut Atautikkut (Inuit Moving Forward Together), the inaugural exhibition of the new Inuit art centre, Qaumajuq, which opened in March 2021 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. The exhibition is a ground-breaking survey of contemporary art from Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. Her other recent projects include the permanent exhibition Ilippunga; the internationally touring co-curated exhibition Among All These Tundras; and SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, which won the Canadian Museums Award for Education in 2017. Igloliorte is the University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/ Montreal, where she leads the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership SSHRC Partnership Grant and Co-Directs the Indigenous Futures Research Centre. Igloliorte is the President of the Board of the Inuit Art Foundation and also serves as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery; on the Board of Directors for the Native North American Art Studies Association; and on the Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, among others.
"I am honoured to receive this award from the Hnatyshyn Foundation, and for the recognition of its esteemed jurors. My curatorial practice aims to centre Indigenous artists, celebrate the dynamic continuity of our cultures, and share new and exciting—and often underrepresented—contemporary artists with the public. I also try to prioritize the mentorship of emerging voices and building capacity across the arts through this work, in order to contribute to Indigenous peoples' artistic and curatorial agency and excellence. As such, I feel this award also recognizes the importance of continuing to make space for emerging curators for the future. Nakummesuak ilonnasi (thank you all so much!)"
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Marianne Nicolson
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Marianne Nicolson (Dzawada’enuxw) holds a PhD in Linguistics and Anthropology from the University of Victoria and is a highly recognized visual artist. She utilises her academic and artistic practice as a platform to advocate for Indigenous linguistic and cultural resurgence.
All her work is political in nature and seeks to uphold Kwakwaka’wakw traditional philosophy and worldview through contemporary mediums and technology. Her work has been exhibited in the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Australia, The Vancouver Art Gallery, The National Museum of the American Indian in New York, Nuit Blanche Toronto, Museum Arnhem, The Netherlands, and many others. Some of her major monumental public artworks are situated in Vancouver International Airport, the Canadian Embassy in Paris, France and the Canadian Embassy in Amman, Jordan.
"I am very much appreciative of the recognition that the Hnatyshyn Foundation's Mid-Career Award 2020 Visual Art Award has accorded me. At this stage of my career to know that my work has contributed to the advocacy of Indigenous peoples through the arts enough to receive this recognition is deeply meaningful.
Gilakasla, (Thank you)".
Emelie Chhangur
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Curator, writer, and artist, Emelie Chhangur, is the newly appointed Director and Curator of the Agnes Etherington Art Centre. This appointment follows a significant curatorial career at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU).
At AGYU, she led the reorientation of the gallery to become a civic, community-facing, ethical space driven by social process and intersectional collaboration. She founded the gallery’s residency program and received 25 OAAG awards for her contributions in writing, publishing, exhibition-making, and public and education programming. Over the past 20 years, Chhangur has emerged as a leading voice for experimental curatorial practice in Canada and is celebrated nationally and internationally for her process-based, participatory curatorial practice.
"I am honoured to receive the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence, following the footsteps of other esteemed curators such as Tania Willard and Candice Hopkins. This award not only comes at a pivotal moment in my career but also at the same time as major changes in the framework of Canada’s art historical futures, to which I am proud to contribute. Receiving this award is also validating. To me, it signals that a socially-engaged methodology that foregrounds sustained, long-term collaboration has now been recognized in the field of Canadian contemporary curatorial work."
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Dana Claxton
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Dana Claxton works in film, video, photography, performance, multi-channel installation and curation. Her work has been exhibited and collected internationally and her films have screened in over 30 countries. Fringing the Cube, her solo survey exhibition, was presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery in the Fall of 2019. She is Head and Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia. Her practice/praxis and life engage with the socio-political, the spiritual, and the enchantment of the everyday. Her family reserve is Wood Mountain Lakota First Nations in beautiful Southwest Saskatchewan.
"I am grateful and honoured to have received this generous award. This award will greatly assist with the exploration of new works that are yet to be shaped - I can move forward knowing that I have the neccessary means to make."
Dana Claxton
Tatanka 1, 2019
Chromogenic metallic print
Courtesy of the artist
Catherine Bédard
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Catherine Bédard is an art historian, exhibition curator and author. She has an M.A. in Art History from the Université de Montréal, and a diploma for advanced studies in History and Civilization from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales in Paris, France.
In addition to her curatorial work, Bédard has translated the work of important historians such as Bram Kempers and Jeffrey Hamburger, and wrote the prefaces for Anachroniques and Histoires de peintures, both by Daniel Arasse. She was a juror for the Festival International du Film sur l’Art (2007), and the Scotiabank Photography Award (2014–16), and currently sits on the Patronage Committee for the Fondation des Artistes in Paris. She has been promoting Canadian art in France, where she has developed a broad cultural network encompassing the visual arts, music and film.
“It is a great honour to receive this award from a Foundation whose values I have always admired, and it is touching to have my work, undertaken outside the country, recognized by my peers. For several years now, I have built my career around the notion that it is possible to work as a contemporary art curator within a highly diplomatic environment — in my case, the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. As such, I am particularly grateful to the Hnatyshyn Foundation for an award based on that work."
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Maria Hupfield
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Maria Hupfield is an interdisciplinary artist and member of the Anishinaabek Nation from Wasauksing First Nation, Ontario. Her hand-sewn industrial felt creations are multidimensional: activated in live performances and video, they function as radical forms of collaboration, craft, and Indigenous futurity. Her first major traveling solo exhibition, The One Who Keeps on Giving, was mounted by The Power Plant Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto, in partnership with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, Galerie de l'UQAM, Montréal, Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax, and the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris. As the recipient of the Grafly Commission, The Ulrich Museum mounted a solo exhibition of her work in 2019. Her work has travelled with Beat Nation: Art, Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, and been shown in New York at The Kitchen, the Brooklyn Information & Culture (BRIC), The Bronx Museum, The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, The Museum of Arts and Design, and SITE Santa Fe, with performances at Gibney Dance, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and The Brooklyn Museum. Hupfield is co-owner of Native Art Department International with Jason Lujan. She was also the Indigenous Artist in Residence at the International Studio Curatorial Program in New York in 2018. Hupfield was appointed Professor of Indigenous Media and Performance at The University of Toronto in 2019. She is represented by Galerie Hugues Charbonneau in Montreal.
Daina Warren
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Daina Warren is a member of the Akamihk Montana First Nation in Maskwacis, Alberta. She received her Bachelor’s degree in 2003, graduating from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She earned a Masters in Art History and Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2012. In 2000, she was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts' Assistance to Aboriginal Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts program to work with grunt gallery in Vancouver. This opportunity led to a permanent position with the artist-run centre as an associate curator and administrator until 2009. Warren then went on to complete another Aboriginal Curatorial Residency at The National Gallery of Canada. During this residency she curated the group exhibition Don't Stop Me Now. Other exhibitions of note include the online exhibitions If These Walls Could Talk and Contains Animal Byproducts! created for the CODE Screen 2010 Vancouver Olympics project. Warren was awarded the 2015 Emily Award from Emily Carr University and was selected as one of six Indigenous women curators as part of the Canada Council for the Arts Delegation to participate in the International First Nations Curators Exchange that took place in Australia (2015), New Zealand (2016), and Canada (2017). Until 2022, she served as Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba. In 2023, she was appointed Executive Director of Indigenous Initiatives at Emily Carr University.
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Peter Morin
(Photo: Greg Staats)
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Peter Morin is an artist, curator and writer from Tahltan Nation in British Columbia. At the time of this award, Morin had just relocated to Brandon, Manitoba, where he joined the Visual and Aboriginal Arts Faculty at Brandon University. In both his artistic practice and in his curatorial work, Morin investigates the impact between Indigenous cultural-based practices and western settler colonialism. This work, defined by Tahltan Nation epistemological production, often takes on the form of performance interventions. Morin has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions including Team Diversity Bannock and The World’s Largest Bannock attempt (2005), A return to the place where God outstretched his hand (2007); 12 Making Objects AKA First Nations DADA (12 Indigenous Interventions) (2009); Peter Morin's Museum (2011); and Peter Morin’s Ceremony Experiments 1 through 8 Circle (2013). In addition to his art-making and performance practice, Morin has curated exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, Bill Reid Gallery, and Yukon Art Centre.
“Peter Morin’s interventions and projects take us outside our own experience and into a new space of humour and wisdom. His work as an artist, teacher, and curator have defined him as a leader within a new generation of artists,” said juror Glenn Alteen.
Tania Willard
(Photo: Kyla Bailey)
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Tania Willard works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as they relate bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard's recent curatorial work includes, Beat Nation: Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture, CUSTOM MADE, Unceded Territories: Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Work to Rule: Krista Belle Stewart, Nanitch: Historical BC photography and BUSH gallery.
In the words of David Garneau, “Tania Willard is a curator of the extraordinary local, the Indigenous as fiercely contemporary, worldly, but also rooted in real places. She brings grounded Indigenous expression and experience to the white box art gallery and conceptual art to the Rez. Her BUSH Gallery projects offer a glimpse into the future of Indigenous curation beyond the art world.”
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Pascal Grandmaison
Born in 1975, Pascal Grandmaison lives and works in Montreal. While he is best known for his work in photography and film/video, his oeuvre also includes sculptures and installations. Grandmaison is interested in the ways images influence our perception and understanding of infinity. His installations, always meticulously timed, explore the fragile chinks at the frontiers of sameness and differences, at the limit of what is perceptible. Subtle and endless play of mirrors, his work is a poetic look at the manner with which time, with all its filters, shapes the perception process. His works has been featured in solo exhibitions at Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Casino Luxembourg – Forum d’art contemporain (Luxembourg), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario), Prefix Photo (Toronto), Galerie Éponyme (Bordeaux) and Galerie René Blouin (Montreal). The artist also participated to group exhibitions, notably at La Compagnie, lieu de creation (Marseilles), the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario), Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal), Centre culturel canadien (Paris). His videos have been presented internationally, more recently at Haus der Kulturen des Welt (Berlin), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Edimburgh Art Festival (Edimburgh), Le Fresnoy (Tourcoing), Centre Pompidou (Paris). He is represented by Galerie René Blouin (Montréal) and by Eponyme Galerie (Bordeaux).
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Candice Hopkins
Photo: Jason S. Ordaz
Candice Hopkins has curated and published widely and lectured at a variety of venues including the Witte de With, the Dakar Biennale, and Tate Modern, and delivered a keynote lecture on the topic of the “sovereign imagination” for dOCUMENTA(13). She co-curated Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art; and the 2014 SITE Santa Fe biennial exhibition Unsettled Landscapes. Previously based in New Mexico, she now lives and works in Red Hook, New York.
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Kent Monkman
An artist of Cree ancestry who works in a variety of media including painting, film/video, performance and installation, Kent Monkman has exhibited widely within Canada, and is well represented in numerous private and public collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Award for Curatorial Excellence
Daina Augaitis
Chief Curator and Associate Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1996 to 2017, Daina Augaitis, played a key role in shaping the museum’s exhibition program and building its collections. Augaitis has organized solo exhibitions of artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Stan Douglas, Brian Jungen, Song Dong, Ian Wallace, Gillian Wearing, Paul Wong, and Yang Fudong, and thematic exhibitions that have featured socially based works. She was formerly director of the Visual Arts Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, where she organized residencies for artists and curators, and has held curatorial positions at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Western Front, Convertible Showroom, and Franklin Furnace. In 2011, Augaitis curated the exhibition Muntadas: Entre/Between at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain.
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Marcel Dzama
Marcel Dzama‘s practice is characterized by an immediately recognizable visual language that draws from a diverse range of references and artistic influences such as Duchamp, Schlemmer, the Ballet Russes and Dada. While seduced into thinking we recognize all that is apparent the work resists straightforward interpretation in its allegorical and dream-like scenarios.
In recommending Dzama for The Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Art Award, the jury noted that an expansive range and depth of narrative has emerged since he first became known for his now distinctive drawings. Evident in pieces made across media, including recent large-scale ceramic tableaux and ambitious films, Dzama’s work reveals a tougher, more politicized reading combining personal histories aligned with the strategies of early modernism. Such beguiling sophistication foiled by the unpredictable, lends a nuanced, multi-layered air to his subjects while elucidating a resonance with our contemporary world.
Born in 1974 in Winnipeg, Dzama now lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Dzama has exhibited widely, in 2010 Aux mille tours/Of Many Turns, a major survey of the artist’s work presented at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Canada. Other recent solo exhibitions include Con razón o sin ella/With or Without Reason, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain; A Touch of Evil/Un toque de maldad, Museo de Arte de Zapopan (MAZ), Zapopan, Mexico; World Chess Hall of Fame and Museum, St. Louis, Missouri (all 2012); A Game of Chess, Gemeentemuseum, The Hague; The Never Known into the Forgotten, Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany (both 2011); Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2008); Tree with Roots, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2006); and The Lotus Eaters, Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain de Grenoble, France (2005). A comprehensive monograph of Dzama’s work produced and designed in collaboration with the artist, will be published in fall 2013.
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Marie-Josée Jean
Born in 1971 in Repentigny, Québec, Marie-Josée Jean is the executive and artistic director of VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, and a curator, in addition to teaching at Université du Québec à Montréal and Université Laval in Québec City. In 2012, she completed an important capital project enabling VOX to take over the fourth floor of the 2-22, a new cultural building in downtown Montréal. She has spent more than fifteen years researching the theory and practice of contemporary art, organizing exhibitions, producing monographs, and publishing essays.
Within the context of her research, exhibitions are places for reflection and experimentation, allowing her to reintegrate issues that have influenced art on-and-off since the 1960s. Marie-Josée is currently working on a major research project, in association with Canadian and European institutions, on the history and practice of exhibitions conceived by artists. She served as artistic director of two installments of the Mois de la Photo de Montréal, titled Le Souci du document [Photography as Document] (1999) and Le Pouvoir de l’image [The Power of the Image] (2001).
As an independent curator, she has developed numerous exhibitions at institutions such as the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Casino Luxembourg–Forum d’art contemporain, the Centre d’art Santa Mònica in Barcelona, the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in Germany, and the Villa Arson, Centre national d’art contemporain in Nice.
Marie-Josée lives and works in Montréal and Vienna, Austria.
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Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Nicole Gingras
Nicole Gingras is a Montréal-based researcher, author and curator who studied visual arts, cinema, and art history at the Université Laval, Concordia University, and the Université de Montréal. Her interest in images, sound and media arts has become well-known through numerous exhibitions, events and publications. Over the past 30 years she has been associated with museums, galleries, artist-run centres and festivals in Québec, Canada and internationally. She has also developed a wide range of outreach initiatives, including her own publishing house, Éditions Nicole Gingras, launched in 1996. She was instrumental in establishing MINUTE, a collective founded in 2002, which produces media arts events in Québec and internationally, including Ectoplasmes (2006) in Montréal and Frictions (2009) at Club Transmediale in Berlin, Germany.
Nicole Gingras has been the curator of several exhibitions of works by Québec artists, each accompanied by a monograph: Donigan Cumming (1993), Raymonde April (1997), Michèle Waquant (1999), Mario Côté (2002), Manon Labrecque (2003), Christof Migone (2006), Emmanuelle Léonard (2011), and Raymond Gervais (2011, 2012). She also produced a retrospective of the films of Franco-British artist David Larcher (2000); an important exhibition of work by German artists Doris Kuwert (2008) and Rolf Julius (2009); and several thematic exhibitions on practices associated with the image, observation and surveillance, sound and the media arts,including Les Absences de la photographie (1994); Regarder, observer surveiller (2004); and Tracer, Retracer/Tracking the Traces (2005–2006).
Nicole Gingras has been a programmer at FIFA – the Festival international du film sur l’art in Montréal since 2003. As well, she was involved with the curating of two important Québec biennales: TraficART 2010 in Saguenay with Les formes du temps and, more recently, la Manif d’art 6 de Québec with Machines—Les formes du mouvement. She recently accepted the position of Director for the upcoming Biennale de Montréal.
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Lani Maestro
For many years, Lani Maestro has been concerned with questions of how we occupy space, how space occupies us, as well as how our space is occupied with and by others. This direction is inevitably affiliated with the themes of home: are we at home by belonging or as difference, that is, by way of non-‐belonging?
Initially intellectually enigmatic but sensuously resonant, Maestro’s formally restrained work is almost (in today’s context) elegantly classical in spite of the raw emotion sometimes embodied there. Many of Maestro’s works situate places within places as a means by which to have us travel in and out of the home, inside and outside space, hoping to erode binary opposition. In this sense we might describe Maestro’s work as architecture of the body, with the proviso that the effect of such works, which emphasize passage rather than permanence, ultimately erode architecture’s claim to authority.
Maestro’ most recent collaborative exhibition, Digital Tagalog, was shown at Mo_Space, Manila, 2012. Forthcoming individual exhibitions include two commissioned site-specific works in Lorraine and l’Ardeche in France (2013), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manila and the Vargas Museum, Manila, 2014.
Recent solo shows include “Her rain” (she laughs) 2011, Plug In ICA in Winnipeg, “Her rain,” Centre A, in Vancouver, 2011, l’oubli de l’air (with Malcolm Goldstein), Fonderie Darling, Montreal, 2010, cine-ma, Campo Santa Margherita, Venice, Italy, Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montreal, 2007, Sing Mother, Twilight Eats You, Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, 2006 and je suis toi, Eglise Saint Nicolas, Caen, commissioned by Wharf, Centre d’art contemporain de Basse-‐Normandie in 2006.
A selection of group exhibitions include: Encounter: the Royal Academy (London)/Asia, La Salle, ICA Singapore, 2012, Points of Ellipsis, Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2011, Complete and Unabridged, ICA Singapore, 2011, The Limits, Kitchen‐Waterloo Art Gallery, Ontario, Canada, 2011; Sharjah Biennial, The Museum of Sharjah, UAE, 2009, Mixed Bathing World, The Beppu Project, Beppu, Japan, 2009, Tempo ao Tempo, Museum of Contemporary Art, Vigo, Spain, 2007, Busan Biennial, Busan Museum of Art, Korea, 2004, Mind Space, Ho Am Gallery, Samsung Foundation, Seoul, Korea, 2004, Billboard Project, Goodwater Gallery, Toronto, 2003, Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai Art Museum, China, 2000, Territorios Ausentes, Casa de las Americas, Madrid, Spain, 2000, Sydney Biennial, Australia, 1998, Istanbul Biennial, Turkey, 1997, Crossings, National Gallery of Canada, 1998, Havana Biennial, Cuba, 1994, 1986, Canadian Biennial of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, 1989.
Lani Maestro lives and works in Canada, France and Manila.
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Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Philip Monk
Philip Monk is Director of the Art Gallery of York University in Toronto. Previously he was a curator at The Power Plant (1994 – 2003) and the Art Gallery of Ontario (1985 – 1993). Between 1977 and 1984, he was a writer and free-lance curator.
As well as many catalogues, articles, essays, and reviews, Monk has published six books: Struggles with the Image: Essays in Art Criticism (1988); Double-Cross: The Hollywood Films of Douglas Gordon (2003), Spirit Hunter: The Haunting of American Culture by Myths of Violence (2005); Stan Douglas: Discordant Absences (2006); Disassembling the Archive: Fiona Tan (2007); and And While I Have Been Lying Here Perfectly Still: The Saskia Olde Wolbers Files (2009). A book on General Idea is forthcoming. In 2009, he was the inaugural recipient of the Ontario Association of Art Galleries Lifetime Achievement Award.
In making the curatorial award recommendation, the jury praised Monk’s enormous ongoing contribution to contemporary art in Canada and internationally, which he has addressed with outstanding rigour and intellectual acuity in numerous exhibitions, lectures and substantial publications.
“The history of the Toronto arts community, in particular, is indelibly marked by his critical candour and dedicated curatorial work from the late 1970s on, having been the focus of many important group and solo exhibitions of artists such as Michael Snow, Ian Carr-Harris, Robin Collyer, Liz Magor, Shirley Wiitasalo, General Idea, Fastwurms, Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins and many others. Widely recognized as one of the most prolific and articulate writers on contemporary art in Canada, Monk is also internationally respected for his vigorous and innovative curatorial transformation of the Art Gallery of York University, one of Canada's pre-eminent University-based galleries, into a particularly vibrant, acutely current and challenging institution.”
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Geoffrey Farmer
At once fragile and multiform, discreet and omnipresent, Farmer's work is the product of simple yet strategic manipulations. It operates on the same level as everyday experience: simultaneously rational and chaotic, undeniably concrete yet shaped by the imagination. In a voice that combines poetry and social commentary, his work conjures and reactivates a variety of narratives drawn from history, popular culture, art history and social environments. It also reflects an interest in the exhibition itself – both its fictional power and its temporal component. Farmer focuses on particular features of these diverse sources, notably concepts of work and process, transformation and performance.
In recommending Geoffrey Farmer for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Art Award, the jury considered his original and steadfastly courageous practice.
“Choosing to locate his art in activity, process and relationships, Farmer counters the idea that a museum is a static zone for inert objects. His installations can invoke the stage of Noh theatre or take place within the walls of the museum. Both topical and poetically dream-like, they set in motion assemblage and collage as ways of reading history and contemporary crises. Since his monumental ‘Pale Fire Freedom Machine,’ a work which celebrates the forgotten proletariat, at the Power Plant in 2005, Farmer has gone on to have major installations at Tate Modern, the Biennale of Sydney and the Istanbul Biennial among other international venues. Despite his international following, Geoffrey Farmer pays much attention to the local scene. For a recent Vancouver City Public Art Commission, Farmer designed and opened a gallery on Vancouver's east side to show the work of artists, other than himself, and to unite the creative community. It is this great generosity that lies at the heart of his artistic practice.”
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Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Scott Watson
Scott Watson is Director/Curator of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (1989- ) and Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (2003- ) at the University of British Columbia (UBC). He is Director and Graduate Advisor for UBC’s Critical Curatorial Studies program, which he helped initiate in September 2002. Recent distinctions include the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in British Columbia Arts (2008), and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005).
Professor Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (B.C. Book Prize) in 1991. Recent writing includes "Race, wilderness, territory and the origins of the Modern Canadian landscape" and "Disfigured Nature" (in Beyond Wilderness, Montreal: McGill University Press, 2007); "Transmission difficulties: Vancouver painting in the 1960s "(in Paint, Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006); and "The Lost City: Vancouver Painting in the 1950s" (in A Modern Life: Art and Design in British Columbia 1945-1960, Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004). Recent and upcoming curated exhibitions include Mark Boulos (2010); Jack Shadbolt: Underpinnings (2009); Exponential Future (2008); Intertidal : Vancouver art & artists (2005/06) at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp; Stan Douglas: Inconsolable Memories (2005/06); Rebecca Belmore: Fountain (2005) for the Venice Biennale Canadian Pavilion; and Thrown: Influences and Intentions of West Coast Ceramics (2004), from which emerged the current publication project on British Columbia's studio pottery movement. He is presently researching Concrete Poetry for an upcoming publication and exhibition.
Professor Watson's research focus is contemporary art and issues, art theory and criticism, 20th century art history, curatorial and exhibition studies.
Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Shary Boyle
Born in 1972 and based in Toronto, Shary Boyle graduated from the Ontario College of Art in 1994 and has since traveled, lived and performed throughout Canada, Europe and the US. Her practice includes drawing, painting, sculpture and performance. Boyle is well known for her bold, fantastical explorations of the figure. Highly crafted and deeply imaginative, her multi-disciplinary practice mines the history of porcelain figurines, animist mythologies and historical portraiture to create a symbolic language uniquely her own. From sculpture to projection, she interprets her personal observations of sexuality, relationships and human vulnerability through a darkly feminist lens.
Shary Boyle's work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions including at the Power Plant (Toronto, 2006) and at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Lethbridge, 2008). In 2009 her work was featured at the Fumetto Festival in Lucerne, Switzerland, and included in the exhibition The Likely Fate of the Man that Swallowed the Ghost organized by the Centre Pompidou at the Conciergerie in Paris. Flesh and Blood, a national touring exhibit of her work curated by Louise Déry of the Galerie de l'UQAM, will circulate from the Art Gallery of Ontario, to l'UQAM in Montreal and The Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver in 2011. The Gardiner Museum in Toronto, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the Maison Rouge in Paris feature Boyle's work in their 2010 and 2011 programs.
Boyle's work is collected internationally, with pieces in the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Paisley Museum in Scotland. Boyle is the 2009 recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the AGO for her outstanding contribution to visual arts in Canada.
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Rebecca Belmore
Born in Ontario, Rebecca Belmore (Anishinaabe) works in a variety of media including sculpture, installation, video and performance. Currently living and working in Vancouver, Belmore has long been creating work about the plight of the disenfranchised and marginalized in society. In her poignant and dramatic performances, the artist's own body becomes the site of historical, cultural and political investigations as she explores self and community, boundaries between public and private, chaos and linear narrative. The official representative for Canada at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Belmore's work has been exhibited internationally since 1987 and can be found in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada Council Art Bank, and many others. In 2004 Belmore received the prestigious VIVA award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt foundation.
In recommending Rebecca for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award, the jury highlighted the impact of her artistic practice: “Since the late 1980s, Rebecca Belmore has challenged romantic conceptions of Aboriginal cultures through a remarkable series of performance art pieces and mixed media installations. Her work combines passionate thinking and a brilliant use of materials with a deep cultural knowledge drawn from her Anishinaabe heritage. Working tirelessly against historical amnesia, her work gives expression to silenced voices by restoring value to community, local experience and the land. In the process, Belmore's work has inspired myriad artists from within and without the First Nations artistic community to follow her ground-breaking path. Belmore's achievement has been an ever evolving art practice which, while it explores her own history, simultaneously challenges the precepts and concepts of contemporary art on a global stage.”
2009 Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Anthony Kiendl
Anthony Kiendl is Director of Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, Canada, and in 2007 was Leverhulme Visiting Research Fellow at School of Arts, Middlesex University, London. He was the Director of Visual Arts, Walter Phillips Gallery and the Banff International Curatorial Institute at The Banff Centre in Alberta from 2002 until 2006. In 2002, he served as Acting Director of the Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina Public Library in Saskatchewan where he was Curator since 1997. He is currently the instructor of a graduate theory seminar in the Architecture Department at the University of Manitoba.
Emerging from a studio art background, Kiendl's curatorial practice takes curating as a creative practice, and one that relies on the inter-textuality of art, media, writing, popular culture, architecture and space. Specifically, his curatorial practice has theorized weakness, pathos, failure-and related sentiments such as nostalgia-as responses to modernism. This strategy has been manifested in diverse forms including the exhibition Little Worlds (1998), an exploration of diminutive environments by artists; Fluffy (1999) a research project on the aesthetics and meaning of cuteness; Space Camp 2000: Uncertainty, Speculative Fictions and Art (2000), an inter-disciplinary project on speculative fictions and alterity; and Godzilla vs. Skateboarders: Skateboarding as a Critique of Social Spaces (2001). These projects often have critical spatial elements, contextualizing artwork within broader environments.
Kiendl's practice has also engaged with issues of research in the visual arts. In 1999 he co-curated, with Bruce Grenville, Komar and Melamid's Canada's Most Wanted and Most Unwanted Paintings, organizing the first scientific survey of Canadians' likes and dislikes in art. In 2004 he was the principal applicant and recipient of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant for research and creation in fine arts. This research project, entitled Informal Architectures, took the form of a series of exhibition projects, publications, symposia and seminars on spatial culture over three years. His most recent book, Informal Architectures was published by Black Dog Publishing (London, UK). His writing on art has been published in Parachute, FUSE, Flash Art, Canadian Art and numerous catalogue essays. In 2005, Kiendl wrote for, edited, and produced the catalogue Lida Abdul, the first official representation for Afghanistan at the Venice Biennale. Also In 2005, Kiendl organized a residency lead by artists Dan Graham and Dara Birnbaum at The Banff Centre, producing Graham's video Death by Chocolate: West Edmonton Mall 1986-2005.
Kiendl has lectured internationally and has been instrumental in the delivery of several symposia including those for Tate Modern, the Banff International Curatorial Institute and Plug In ICA. His most recent curatorial project was the creation and direction of Summer School 2009 (Plug In ICA), an inter-disciplinary alternative art school/residency program for professional artists and curators.
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller
Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have been practicing artists, singly and in tandem, since the 1980s. In recent years their collaborative multimedia practice has been celebrated around the world and they have generated much excitement and pride as ambassadors for Canadian contemporary art.
Born in 1957 in Brussels, Ontario, Janet Cardiff studied at Queen's University and the University of Alberta where she earned a master's degree in Visual Arts in 1983. Her experimental multimedia works have included guided audio and video "walks" that lead the participants through a "virtual journey" using recorded voices and sounds, sometimes combined with images, delivered via a headset or the screen of a camcorder. In 1982 she married fellow artist George Bures Miller (born in 1960 in Vegreville, Alberta) while he was studying at the Ontario College of Art.
For over a decade the couple lived and worked in Lethbridge, Alberta, where they refined their art and came to artistic maturity. In the nineties, Cardiff was an Associate Professor of art at the University of Lethbridge where she still retains the title of Adjunct Professor. The artists currently live and work in Grindrod, British Columbia and Berlin, Germany.
In 2001 Cardiff and Miller became the first Canadian artists to win the prestigious Venice Biennale Special Award, as well as the Benesse Prize, for their installation The Paradise Institute, a 16-seat movie theatre where viewers watch a mystery film and become entangled as witnesses to a possible crime played out in the audience and on the screen. In the same year Cardiff's solo work Forty-Part Motet was awarded the Millennium Prize by the National Gallery of Canada. Incorporating sculpture and sound, this installation consists of forty separately recorded choir voices played back through a multitude of speakers, thus allowing the gallery visitor to experience choral music from the inside. The piece was so well received by the public that the National Gallery extended the exhibition by several months and the installation has been circulating internationally ever since.
Cardiff and Miller have seen their work presented in some of the most important contemporary art venues in the world, including the Carnegie International (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Tate Modern (London), and the São Paulo, Istanbul, Sydney and Venice Biennals. Recent works by the team include The Secret Hotel (2005), Opera for a Small Room (2005), The Killing Machine (2007), and A Murder of Crows (2008), which was one of the highlights of the 2008 Sydney Biennale. A solo exhibition of their work was also presented at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, as well as Modern Art Oxford (UK), in 2008.
In recommending Cardiff and Miller for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award, the jury highlighted the international impact of their artistic practice: "Since the 1990s, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller have made engaging, challenging installation works that have contributed enormously to the evolution of contemporary art. Their poetic, multifaceted exhibitions have moved and influenced a number of generations of art makers across Canada and throughout the world. Their intelligent, thoughtful and emotionally moving art embraces our human frailty and vulnerability through a mix of genres: film noir, sci-fi thriller and experimental film. Their unique use of binaural ‘surround sound’ and haunting music creates enchanting immersive experiences. Cardiff and Miller draw upon boundless numbers of disciplines to weave together stories that confront the mysteries of the heart, the soul and the workings of the human mind."
Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Barbara Fischer
Barbara Fischer is a lecturer, writer, and Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto. Barbara Fischer has an M.A. in art history from York University. She formerly held curatorial positions at the Open Space Gallery (Victoria, B.C.), the Walter Phillips Gallery (Banff Centre), the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Power Plant (Toronto) and the Blackwood Gallery (University of Toronto at Mississauga). She has taught contemporary art, art history, theory and criticism, and curatorial studies at the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto), the University of Western Ontario (London) and the University of Toronto at Mississauga.
Ms. Fischer has curated numerous solo exhibitions of contemporary Canadian artists including John Greyson, Tanya Mars, Stan Douglas and Fastwurms, as well as group exhibitions of Canadian and international conceptual art, photo-based works, video and performance, sculpture, outdoor projects, painting and drawing. Among her many thematic exhibitions are Love Gasoline: Works on Body, Image, Text, 1996, (an exhibition of performance-documentation, video, sculpture and photography from the late 1960s and early 1970s), New Modular, 2002, (which focused on sculptural and photo-based works probing the relation between art, design and architecture by a new generation of Canadian artists), Re-Play (Soundtracks), 2003, (which examined the relation between art and music in the context of the 20th century and current tendencies in visual art), and Projections, 2007, (the first major cross-Canada survey of projection-based works in the history of contemporary art in Canada, 1964-2007). In 2009, Ms. Fischer curated the official Canadian exhibition by artist Mark Lewis at the Venice Biennale of Visual Art, the most prestigious international venue for the visual arts. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Centre of Contemporary Art and of C Magazine, and is a member of the Advisory Panel of the Canadian Art Foundation. She has received the annual Exhibition Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries three times (2000, 2004 and 2008), as well as the OAAG Historical Curatorial Writing Award in 2002.
In recommending Barbara Fischer for the curatorial award the jury praised the deep understanding of artists and their work that underlies her curatorial process. "Whether reexamining works of historical significance or introducing new work by an emerging artist, Barbara unites her deep-rooted connection to the issues that motivate artistic practices with dedicated scholarship. Her ability to apply broad art historical and theoretical knowledge to nascent ideas circulating among artists has enabled her to identify key features of emerging concerns. This same ability has given her writing both lucidity and intellectual authority. Barbara knows her community profoundly, which provides her with advanced knowledge of the artistic questions that inspire that community and which, in turn, sustains the courage of her commitments. In her academic engagements Barbara has shown herself to be a generous teacher and mentor, inspiring emulation and deep respect, while demonstrating her commitment to the ongoing development of Canadian art practices at the highest level."
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Ken Lum
One of Canada's leading international artists, Ken Lum was born in Vancouver in 1956. He received a Bachelor of Science degree at Simon Fraser University in 1980 and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1985 from the University of British Columbia where he later became a professor of Fine Arts. He has also been a visiting professor at L'École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris, the Akademie der Bildende Kunst in Munich and the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, China. He is currently a Professor in the Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College in New York State.
While Lum has employed sculpture and painting in his practice, it is his photo-text works that have gained the artist international attention in recent years. Using the portrait as his working model, Lum comments on various elements of contemporary life and art by juxtaposing text, whether it be a person's name or a fragment of a thought or dialogue, with photographs of people in ordinary (but staged) situations and environments.
Lum's gregarious and engaging work has been exhibited internationally since 1978. He has participated in many prestigious international art exhibitions including, Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany (2002), the Shanghai Biennale (2000), the Sydney Biennale (1992), Carnegie International in Pittsburgh (1991), the Sáo Paulo Biennial (1998), the Venice Biennale (1995, 2001), the Johannesburg Biennale (1997) and the 10th Istanbul Biennial (2007). A major solo exhibition of his work was organized in 1990 by the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and a retrospective of his work entitled "Ken Lum: Works with Photography" was organized and circulated by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in 2002. In the summer of 2007 he had his first solo exhibition in China, at Tang Contemporary Art Gallery in Beijing. He has also created public art for the cities of Vancouver, Vienna (Austria), Strasbourg (France) and Siena (Italy), as well as the region of La Plaiv in Switzerland.
In recommending Lum for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award, the jury highlighted the multifaceted nature of Lum’s artistic practice: "From installations which present arrangements of furniture and décor that thwart physical access, to photographic portraits embellished with advertising graphics, Ken Lum's work uses examples of familiar commercial design in situations which challenge the limits of good taste. Recognizing that the formation of one's identity is informed by social and commercial influences, Lum blurs the boundaries between traditional and popular aesthetics in the interest of revealing the basis of our contemporary ethos. In addition to his studio work, Ken Lum has persistently challenged the precepts of the established art world through public presentations, writing and teaching. He has a particular interest in opening the field to include non-European artists. In 2000 he co-founded Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art and has undertaken curatorial work in Africa, China and the United Arab Emirates. Taken together, Ken Lum's activities constitute an active, critical engagement with the public as to what art is, how it is used and who has access to it."
2007 Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art
Louise Déry
The recipient of the 2007 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art is Louise Déry, Director of the Art Gallery at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). Louise Déry has a Ph.D. in art history from Université Laval. She formerly held curatorial positions at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (1987-1992) and at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (1992-1995).
Déry's numerous projects as a contemporary art curator have greatly contributed to the advancement of Quebec and Canadian art both nationally and internationally, particularly in France, Belgium, Italy, China, Japan and the United States. She has organized thematic exhibitions that demonstrate her exceptional ability to zero in on the key issues of present-day art, such as public art (Paysages Verticaux, 1989), socially engaged art (L'Art inquiet, 1998), conversation (Are you talking to me?, 2003), the relationship between art and writing (Glissements, 2005), identity (Un archipel de désirs, 1991; Espaces intérieurs, 1998) and absence (L'image manquante, 2004).
A number of her publications have had a significant impact on the development of Quebec art history because they were the first monographs written on artists who have since become permanent fixtures on the art scene (Dominique Blain, Roberto Pellegrinuzzi, Peter Gnass, Myriam Laplante, Jocelyn Robert, Raphaëlle de Groot, among others). Louise Déry has particularly distinguished herself as Director of the Galerie UQAM since taking over the position in 1997. Under her leadership the gallery has become recognized as one of the most intellectually rigorous art galleries in Canada. In 2007, Ms. Déry confirmed the reputation of the institution she manages by serving as curator for the David Altmejd exhibition (Index) in the Canadian pavilion at the Venice Biennale. The Altmejd exhibition in Venice was lauded by both Canadian and international art critics as one of the highlights of the prestigious biannual event featuring contemporary art.
In recommending Louise Déry for the Hnatyshyn award, the jury noted the intellectual rigour of her curatorial practice. "Her exhibitions show an ability to engage with the contemporary world and her outstanding catalogues embody a desire to reflect on what it means to live in our world today. They combine a concern for making art accessible to a broad audience with a refined interpretation of the works, giving equal attention to the visual aspect of a work and its meaning."
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Award for Outstanding Achievement as an Artist
Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas is an internationally renowned photographer, filmmaker and multimedia installation artist who was born in 1960 in Vancouver where he currently lives and works. He studied fine arts at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. His work has been collected and exhibited worldwide.
A member of the "Vancouver School" of photo-conceptualism, Douglas has created distinctive and compelling installation art, incorporating film, video and photography. In recent years, he has devoted much of his time to a number of ambitious projects that challenge traditional modes of narrative filmmaking.
Douglas has exhibited widely since his first solo show in 1981. Solo exhibitions of his art have been organized by major institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario (1987), Musée national d'art moderne in Paris (1994), the Vancouver Art Gallery (1999), the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and the Serpentine Gallery in London (2002). His work has also been included in a large number of group exhibitions, including the Biennale of Sydney (1990, 1996 and 2000), Venice Biennale (1990, 2001 and 2005), Documenta in Kassel, Germany, (1992, 1997 and 2002), Whitney Biennial in New York (1995), Carnegie International in Pittsburg (1995), Berlin Biennale (1998), and Moving Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (2003). Douglas' work is the subject of numerous publications, including a monograph from Britain's prestigious Phaidon Press in 1998 and a new work by Philip Monk from German publisher Dumont in 2006.
Douglas was an artist-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1989 and at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris in 1992. He was awarded a grant from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst to work in Berlin in 1994. He received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (Canada) in 1999 and the Arnold Bode Prize (Germany) in 2001.
Screened as a World Premiere at the 2006 Vancouver International Film Festival, Douglas' latest work, Klatsassin, is an exploration of time and perception, bound together to create British Columbian history. Projected directly off a computer hard drive, the film permutes for six days without exactly repeating.
