The laureates received their awards on September 4th, 2018 at a special reception at the headquarters of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in Ottawa.
Eunice Bélidor - Award for Emerging Curator of Contemporary Canadian Art
Born in Tiohtia:ke /Montreal, Bélidor is a curator, critic and researcher, specializing in contemporary Haitian art, and interested in fashion design, performance, Black studies and feminism. Her curatorial practice aims to create intersectional links between her research interests, as well as the art object / subject and the institution. She is the founder of #CuratorialTips, a research and help tool for emerging curators and their practice. She questions everything, believing that asking the right questions are the best ways to come up with creative and thoughtful answers. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, the Journal of Curatorial Studies, Invitation (Art Mûr gallery), InCirculation, and Espace Art Actuel. She regularly takes part in various juries and committees: she currently sits on the Visual Arts Evaluation Committee at the Conseil des Arts de Montréal. She currently works as programming coordinator at articule, an artist-run centre in Montreal.
"This award will help me pursue the research and development of my upcoming exhibition on the Black body and how heavily codified it is, and how performative it is represented. It will also help me to focus more on critical writing, developing the tools and improving this skill, so that I can better write and disseminate ideas on curating, intersectionality, gender and the different issues affecting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Colour) lives."
Anique Jordan - Award for Emerging Visual Artist
A self-trained Scarborough born, Trinidadian, multi-disciplinary artist, Jordan specializes in 3 areas: costume, performance and photography. Jordan integrates these three diverse art practices to create a unique and distinctive artistic style called performance-photography. These three elements are influenced by a practice rooted in the dying art of Trinidadian carnival masquerade costume making and street performance.
“My work is deeply rooted in exposing what is invisible, erased or absent from historical narratives, particularly focusing on Black Canadian history. Of Black bodies, I ask where can we see what is historically, socially and politically deemed invisible in Canada? Yet hyper-visible in Canadian institutions? I have found what is central to these answers are the creation or recognition of bodies that are capable of possessing both spaces, a hybridity of sorts. Visualizing these bodies and sites is the at nucleus of my practice and fuels the vision of my work”
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