PROGRAM
The William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists
Past Recipients
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Maggy Hamel-Metsos (she/her)
Photo: William Bobby Sabourin
Working primarily in sculpture, Maggy Hamel-Metsos’s practice is a negotiation between the singular (personal) and the common (cultural). Through objects, images and text, she establishes semantic connections between the personal, the mythological and the historical. She is interested in the mechanisms of reduction, expansion and abstraction present in language and while making use of words in her own work, she incorporates those strategies in her material propositions as well.
Hamel-Metsos’s work has been exhibited and is in private collections in Canada, Germany, and the USA. Caretakers, her debut exhibition at the Parc Offsite gallery in Montreal, took place in 2021 and was followed up by a second solo show titled Whole Wide World. Recent exhibitions include Life’s Marching Band at Pumice Raft in Toronto and My Whole World at Baader-Meinhof in Omaha. She is the 2021 Québec recipient of the BMO 1st Art! Prize and is a laureate of Fonderie Darling’s 2023-2026 Montreal Studio Program.
Find Maggy on Instagram at @tungstenwarshields
House of Cards, 2022, hand polished steel cards, variable dimensions, photo credit: Parker Kay
Shaya Ishaq (she/her)
Photo: Brandon Brookbank
Shaya Ishaq is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and designer interested in craft, diaspora, design anthropology, and temporality.
Face jug no.2, 2022, porcelain clay and plaster. Photo Credit: Roya Del Sol
“Devoted to materiality, I often work with textiles and clay to create wearable art, jewelry, and immersive installations that embrace the emergent possibilities of spatial design. Through the meditative processes of weaving, felting, and handmade ceramics, I explore the nuances of my positionality and the liminality of rites of passage which often leads to sculptural textile and ceramic works.From a young age, creative expression was my way to make a mark, share what was inside me or my perception of the world. If it were not for the teachers and mentors I met along the way who fostered this impulse, I don’t know where I would be today. I am particularly grateful for Toshiko MacAdam, Tanya Aguiñiga, Surabhi Ghosh, and Rory MacDonald for their impact in my journey thus far. I also have immense gratitude for my extended community network that has supported and affirmed me along my path. I would also like to extend gratitude to my incredible matrilineage of Nubi and Lugbara weavers who I feel infinitely connected to in my practice as a weaver and material based artist.”
Find Shaya at www.shayaishaq.com and on Instagram at @shyshaya
Lan “Florence” Yee (they/them)
Photo: Jordan Dawson
Lan “Florence” Yee is a visual artist and self-proclaimed serial collaborator based in Tkaronto/Toronto and Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal.
SEEKING—Ways to look less disposable, print on wood and metal armature, installed as part of CAFKA.23 in Riverside Park, 2023. Photo by Meg Ross.
“I collect text in underappreciated places and ferment it until it is too suspicious to ignore (…). As I sought answers to mouldy questions throughout the years, local and global histories complicated my tenuous relationship to living in Quebec. I was only able to learn about the migratory experiences of my parents and grandparents through university history classes and Wikipedia. This unfortunate irony became the subject and tone of my early work, centered on diasporic anxieties, migrant silence, and assimilationist imperatives.”
“I am indebted to my professors at Dawson College, Concordia University, and OCAD U, who guided me towards alternative ways of doing and being, namely Peter Morin, Alice Ming Wai Jim, Heather Igloliorte, Louise Arsenault, Mary Sui-Yee Wong, and Nadia Myre. Their belief in building better worlds has likewise encouraged me to seek more sustainable ecosystems in art and collectivity.”
Find Lan at www.Lanflorenceyee.com and on Instagram at @lan.florence.yee
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Darcie “Ouiyaghasiak” Bernhardt (they/them)
Darcie Bernhardt is an Inuvialuk/Gwichin artist from Tuktuyaaqtuuq, NT and an alumna of NSCADU in 2019 (BFA).
Bernhardt was raised in Tuktoyaktuk (Inuvik Region, Northwest Territories), where the ocean’s harsh winds carve into the Western Arctic landscape, an ecosystem that fosters transformation and nurtures powerful familial bonds. Their work explores visual storytelling as tradition, as birthright, as decolonial memory preservation - building their role as a memory-keeper.
Ninguqing, 2021, oil on canvas. 71.5” x 48”
Bernhardt has been actively participating in residencies and festivals internationally. Recently, they received the Indigenous Artist Recognition Award from Arts Nova Scotia (2020). Their first painting solo show, Akisuktuaq, was shown at Feheley Fine Art gallery in June 2021.
Guná (she/her)
Guná is a Tlingit artist, dancer, language learner, and lifelong student of Northwest Coast design. She is of Dakhká Tlingit and Tagish Khwáan Ancestry from the Dahk’laweidi Clan which falls under the wolf/eagle moiety. Her family has made the beautiful southern lakes area of the Yukon their home for numerous generations.
Since the moment she was introduced to formline a decade ago, her practice has been dedicated to preserving and understanding a highly esteemed art form. She estimates that she will never stop learning and growing as a Tlingit artist.
Guná recently graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Emily Carr University of Art and Design with a major in Visual Arts. With a passion for learning through the arts, it is Guná’s mission to help dismantle the colonial processes enveloped in society and education. She actively participates in deconstructing and interrogating Eurocentric pedagogy and methodologies in order to build a new foundation stemming from values of diversity, cultural receptivity, empowerment, encouragement, and affirmation. These values are embodied in Guná’s painting practice, proactive participation in language revitalization, and work as an art facilitator, wherein she assists students in becoming in tune with their inherent artistic abilities.
Yéil, A short film and and snow installation visually conveying the Tlingit story of how raven brought light to the world. Directed by TSU North. Contains 15,400 snowshoe steps. measures 4 kilometres around, 300 feet across and covers an area of 1.62 acres; and more than 60 drone flights were needed to capture it all on video.
In her contemporary practice, Guná plays with the relationship of ancient Lingít designs that merge into contemporary and often ironic materials. Her visual art practice centres dominantly in canvas painting that often incorporates Tlingit formline. The irony of her work is activated through the historical context of using European materials such as oil paints, along with utilizing realistic techniques in her works with portraiture. Visually and symbolically, she engages in a discourse with historical European artists in their efforts to assert and maintain power and domination among other nations, and the eventual consequences of the colonial project reaching the shores of her Tlingit ancestors.
Jessica Winters
Jessica Winters is an Inuk painter, printmaker, textile artist, and emerging curator from Makkovik, Nunatsiavut, NL. She received her artistic start at an early age thanks to her family of accomplished craftspeople, including her grandmother, Nellie Winters, a celebrated textile artist who made a living through art and craft and received an honorary doctorate from Memorial University for her contributions to Inuit art. Despite attending residential school and being forced to relocate south, Winters' grandmother has passed down her creativity and traditional knowledge to many of her 11 children and generations of grandchildren. Winters' mother, Blanche Winters, is a traditional craft teacher at our school in Makkovik, and in 2019 designed and produced a line of jackets for Canada Goose's Project Atigi.
Winters has been heavily influenced by her studies in biology, and uses her work to advocate for the preservation of Inuit culture, values, and the surrounding environment.
Primarily a painter, she also challenges herself to work with traditional mediums such as seal skin.
Lichen (Christine’s hill 1), acrylic on stretched canvas, 2022.
Winters has exhibited in groups shows, including Nunatsiavut: Our Beautiful Land at La Guilde gallery in Montreal (2019), Of Myths and Mountains (2020) and The Wish150 Newfoundland & Labrador Mosaic (2017), both at The Rooms in St. John’s, NL, Qautamaat (2022) at the Art Gallery of Guelph, and Tether (2022) at the Yukon Arts Center. She was the first recipient of the Arts and Minds Canada Tilting Invitational Artist in Residency Award.
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Dan Cardinal McCartney (he/him)
Dan Cardinal McCartney is an interdisciplinary artist and emerging curator who holds a degree from AUArts (2016) in Drawing. He is of Mikisew Cree, Dene (Chipewyan), Métis, and mixed settler family lines from Fort Chipewyan, and is a foster care survivor raised in the northern Boreal of Fort McMurray. As a Two Spirit, transgender artist, Dan sifts through patterns of intergenerational trauma, his personal connection between Indigenous diaspora and his gender dysphoria, and colonial impacts on his family.
His focus is on mixed media collage, painting, moving images, and performance. Dan's work has since been featured in Fix your hearts or die at the Alberta Gallery of Art; let’s talk about sex, bb at the Agnes Etherington Arts Centre, and Off-Centre: Queer Contemporary Art in the Prairies at the Dunlop in Regina. He is currently the Assistant Director at Stride Gallery inso-called Calgary, AB.
“I am honoured to be one of the 2021 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists. This prize is a gift, and one that I will cherish moving forward in artmaking. There is no words to describe the gratitude I hold for every person who has believed in the need for a Two Spirit, transgender artist to create. I hope this award will bring pride to my relations, family, and ancestors.”
Oreka James (they/them)
Oreka James is an interdisciplinary artist currently living and working in Toronto. They earned their BFA in Drawing and Painting at the Ontario College of Art and Design University while studying Furniture Design.
“I am humbled to have been chosen as one of your recipients for the 2021 Saunderson’s Emerging Artist prize. It was a most pleasant surprise to be recognized by your establishment at such a challenging time. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and assistance you offer to artists to encourage their art-making and careers. Thanks for your support. ”
Simranpreet Anand (she/her)
Simranpreet Anand is an artist, curator, and cultural worker creating and working on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver). Her work is informed by her familial and community histories, often working with materials and concepts drawn from the histories of Punjabis and the Punjabi diaspora. Her work culminates in a mixture of cultural, textual, and material forms that are presented in ways that interrogate stereotypes, colonial legacies, and material histories.
“I am extremely honoured and grateful to be receiving The Hanatyshyn Foundation's Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists in recognition of my dedication to artistic practice. The prize will contribute towards the continued interrogation of systemic racism and parallel settler colonial structures in my work. ”
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Jude Abu Zaineh
Jude Abu Zaineh is a Palestinian-Canadian multidisciplinary artist and cultural worker. Her practice relies on the use of art, food, and technology to investigate meanings of culture, displacement, diaspora, and belonging. She examines ideals of home and community while working to develop aesthetics rooted in her childhood and upbringing in the Middle East.
Abu Zaineh was one of the first selected artists to participate in a collaborative residency with the Ontario Science Centre and MOCA Toronto (Canada). She has presented her work nationally and internationally including at Cultivamos Cultura, São Luis, Portugal; Museu de Arte, Arquitetura e Tecnologia, Lisbon, Portugal; Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; SVA, NYC, USA. Abu Zaineh received an MFA from the University of Windsor and is currently pursuing her PhD in Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate NY (USA).
“I'm honoured to be selected for the 2020 Hnatyshyn Foundation's Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists and to be amongst the ranks of other high-caliber artists who have received this award. I look forward to continuing my contributions to contemporary Palestinian and Canadian art as I expand on my social and studio practice with this generous gift.”
Marlon Kroll
Marlon Kroll is a German/Canadian artist living and working in Montreal. He holds a BFA in Ceramics from Concordia University and was one of nine laureates of the Darling Foundry’s 2019-2022 Montreal Studio Program, where his studio was generously sponsored by Ann Birks and Caroline Andrieux.
Kroll has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions, including at Clint Roenisch, Toronto and Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2019, both solo); group shows at Interstate Projects, Brooklyn and Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran, Montreal (2019); Central Park, Los Angeles; Galerie René Blouin, Montreal; 8-Eleven, Toronto (2018); Soon.tw, Montreal (2017, solo). In 2020, he will mount a solo show in Rome, IT at Andrea Festa, and have his work included in an expansive show at the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montreal.
“I am honoured to receive this recognition, which prize aside, is already humbling, validating and encouraging beyond belief. As a recipient of the Saunderson’s prize for Emerging Artists, I will hold the privilege of being able to focus on my own little world, and with it, hope to expand its orbit. Thank you!”
Sam Bourgault
Sam Bourgault is a Ph.D. student in the Media Arts and Technology program at University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a bachelor in Computation Arts from Concordia University (2019) and in Physics Engineering from Polytechnique Montreal (2015). Embedding tangible media, code, video, sound and electronics, her practice investigates the ways technology impacts and shapes the physical and embodied experience one has with machines and algorithms.
Contrast is used as a process and method to raise critical awareness: control and submission, real and simulation, mass and solitude, and instructions and randomness are strategies to convey the uncanniness arising at the junction of the real and the virtual worlds. Her work has been exhibited at IEEE-ICRA-X Robotic Program (Montreal, 2019), Sight & Sound Festival (Montreal, 2019), Ars Electronica Campus Exhibition (Linz, 2018), OFFTA (Montreal, 2019), RIPA (Montreal 2019), Mutek Festival (Montreal, 2017), Art Matters (Montreal, 2018), the VAV gallery (Montreal, 2018).
“I am honored to be one of the recipients of the 2020 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists. This prize reasserts the importance of art and creativity in my life and is a confirmation for myself that I am doing something right. This prize will also support my graduate education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which I am extremely grateful for.”
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Annie Beach
Annie Beach earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Honours at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art. Of Cree and Saulteaux ancestry, with family from Peguis First Nation, Treaty 1, Beach’s work addresses the over-sexualization of Indigenous women, and challenges these ideas with sex- and body-positive work. Her work also addresses stereotypes relating to Indigenous identity through counteraction, exaggeration, and humour.
Beach was Co-President of the University of Manitoba’s School of Fine Art Student Association and has held an executive position with Canadian Federation of Students Manitoba. She has sat on the Boards of the Flux Gallery and Ace Art Inc. She instructs art workshops with a variety of non-profit organizations. Beach has curated, designed, and executed a number of public mural projects throughout Winnipeg with the help of community members and youth participants, and has had public art displayed nationally, with hopes to make art that involves community participation and to make art more accessible to the public.
“Being one of three recipients of the 2019 William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists has me at a loss of words. This generous gift, particularly as a current student at the University of Manitoba’s School of Art, will provide immense support in beginning my career as an artist. Ekosi to Daina Warren, for nominating me, and seeing the potential of myself and the work that I do in our city. I owe so much to my community, my kin, my peers, for being an integral part of my journey in learning my cultural identity, and for being support and inspiration in my life. This support is why I am passionate about accessible and public art, and positive representation, because art is such a powerful gift to share with others. I have been given so much that I only want to give in return. I want to continue with gifting art to those around me, through murals and public art projects, and that will be a possibility with the help of this prize.”
Evin Collis
Evin Collis is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who creates drawings, paintings, comics, sculptures and stop-motion animations that often investigate the complexities of history, identity, isolation and the degraded landscape. In 2016 he graduated with an MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
Collis has exhibited his works across Canada, the United States, and Italy and has been the recipient of various grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Winnipeg Arts Council.
“It is a great honour to be among the artists selected for this year’s Saunderson Prize. This prize shall undoubtedly provide assistance as I continue creating my artworks and experimenting with animation.”
Niamh Dooley
Niamh Dooley is an Oji-Cree and Irish contemporary artist based in Winnipeg, Treaty 1 territory. She is a band member of St. Theresa Point First Nation in Treaty 5 territory of Manitoba, but grew up in Treaty 3 territory in Sioux Lookout, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Manitoba’s Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (Honours) in 2017 and continues her relationship with the Winnipeg arts community through various artist-run centres. She predominantly focuses on the exploration of identity, cultural issues, and her interest in the relationships between Indigenous people, past and present, and connecting them with both traditional and contemporary materials in her art practice. Painting is her main discipline, but she often combines different techniques such as beadwork and natural elements, creating sculptural pieces in the process.
“The impact of this prize will allow me to create more artwork and explore new ideas and techniques. I feel grateful to be nominated and will continue to become involved with my community.”
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Esmaa Mohamoud
Esmaa Mohamoud is an African-Canadian sculptor/installation artist working in Toronto. Her sculptures and installations focus on the navigation of Black bodies in contemporary spaces. Engaged in the politics surrounding Black male bodies in particular, her body of work investigates the (in)tangibility of Blackness through the exploration of athletics—specifically, the sport of basketball. With the use of industrial materials, Mohamoud aims to re-examine our contemporary understanding of Blackness and challenge the relationship of blackness as a colour and shade, and Blackness as a societal or cultural construction of a group of people. Mohamoud graduated from Western University’s Bachelors of Art program in 2014. In 2016, Mohamoud graduated from the Interdisciplinary Arts, Media, and Design Masters Program at the Ontario College of Art and Design University.
Audie Murray
Audie Murray is a multi-disciplinary Métis artist originally from Saskatchewan currently learning and creating on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She completed a visual arts diploma at Camosun College in 2016 and her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Regina in 2017. She has studied traditional tattoo practices with the Earth Line Tattoo Collective in the summer of 2017. Working with themes of contemporary Indigenous culture, and ideas of connectivity and duality, she believes that the concept and energy of her artworks informs their materiality and form. Audie has shown her works at various events and spaces in Canada including Open Space, the Mackenzie Art Gallery and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery.
Hjalmer Wenstob
Hjalmer Wenstob was raised on an island in Barkley Sound, in Huu-ay-aht First Nation’s territory, off the west coast of Vancouver Island. It was there that his understanding and desire of pursing both his traditional Nuu-chah-nulth and contemporary art practices began. He is Nuu-Chah-Nulth from the Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nations on his father's side, and Norwegian and English on his mother’s side.
In his interdisciplinary practice, Wenstob specializes in sculpture and carving. He has earned an undergraduate and master's degree at the University of Victoria, where he explored the relationships between cultures and art, and the balance between traditional and contemporary. His work, at times highly political, uses humour and irony to pose difficult questions on respect, reconciliatio,n and environmental issues. Recently, Wenstob and his family opened Cedar House Gallery in Ucluelet, B.C. where Wenstob is exploring ways of weaving his contemporary and political work with more traditional materials and styles.
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Tau Lewis
Tau Lewis is a Jamaican-Canadian artist born in Toronto, Ontario. Since obtaining this prize, she has relocated to Brooklyn, New York. A self-taught sculptor, her work is bodily and organic, with an explicit strangeness and subtle morbidity. Her current practice relies heavily on her surrounding environment; she constructs sculptural portraits using found objects, repurposed materials and live plants sourced from urban and rural landscapes. She considers the history and symbolism of each material, exploring the political boundaries of nature, identity and authenticity. Lewis connects these acts of repurposing and collecting with diasporic experience and black bodies. Her portraits are recuperative gestures that counter persistent tendencies to erase or peripheralize black artists and narratives within Canadian art and history.
Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik
Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik’s installation projects utilize sculpture, architecture, and video to create a type of cinema, leading the viewer through a series of stories, affects, and sensations. Recent exhibitions of their work took place at VALET (Richmond), articule (Montreal), and 8eleven (Toronto). Previously based in Montreal and Richmond, USA, where they completed an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University, they are currently based in Los Angeles.
Nicole Kelly Westman
Nicole Kelly Westman is a visual artist of Métis and Icelandic descent. She grew up in a supportive home with strong-willed parents – her mother, a considerate woman with inventive creativity, and her father, an anonymous feminist. Her work culls from these formative years for insight and inspiration. Westman has had the privilege to be included in exhibitions curated by Peta Rake, Katarina Veljovic, Kimberly Phillips, Ginger Carlson, Leila Timmins, cheyanne turions, and John Hampton. She holds a BFA from Emily Carr University, has held the position of Director at Stride Gallery, and has been published in Inuit Art Quarterly, C-Magazine, and Luma Quarterly.
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Amy Malbeuf
Amy Malbeuf is a Métis visual artist from Rich Lake, Alberta. Through mediums such as caribou hair tufting, beadwork, installation, performance, and video, Malbeuf explores notions of identity, language, and ecology. She has participated in many international artist residencies and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. She holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan.
Jeneen Frei Njootli
Photo: Martin Dee
Jeneen Frei Njootli is a Vuntut Gwitchin artist and a founding member of the ReMatriate collective. In 2012, she graduated from Emily Carr University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and went on to a Visual Art Studio Work Study position at The Banff Centre, followed by two thematic residencies there. She completed her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of British Columbia as an uninvited guest on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories. Performance artist, curator, fashion designer, workshop facilitator and crime-prevention youth-coordinator are some of the positions Frei Njootli has held while exhibiting across Canada. Frei Njootli is from Old Crow, Yukon.
Olivia Whetung
Olivia Whetung is anishinaabekwe and a member of Curve Lake First Nation. She completed her BFA with a minor in anishinaabemowin at Algoma University in 2013, and her MFA at the University of British Columbia in 2016. Whetung works in various media including beadwork, printmaking, and digital media. Her work explores acts of active native presence, as well as the challenges of working with/in/through Indigenous languages in an art world dominated by the English language. Her work is informed in part by her experiences as an anishinaabemowin learner. Whetung is a recipient of a CGS-M Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Award and an Aboriginal Graduate Fellowship.
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Maya Beaudry
Maya Beaudry is an artist from Vancouver whose practice is centered around her subjective experience of material and her sensitivity to its affective qualities. Her work is primarily installation-based and extends into painting, textiles, sculpture, video, and design. In 2013 she founded Sunset Terrace, a shared studio and exhibition space, which she operates alongside and in dialogue with her studio practice. Much of her work concerns the psychological implications of interior space, aiming to find an intersection of the mystical and the practical and to consider the inherent conflicts that arise between the aesthetic and the pragmatic. She received a BFA from Emily Carr University in 2013 and was the recipient of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art CD Howe Scholarship.
Jessie McNeil
In her interdisciplinary art practice, Jessie McNeil addresses themes of place and memory with an emphasis on cultural history, identity, and language. Her figurative paper-based collages, which she calls "portraits of place" are made with the eye of a street photographer while fulfilling the artist’s need to cut, paste, smudge and assemble. McNeil holds a BFA from Emily Carr University, has exhibited locally and nationally, and has completed an artist residency project at the Estonian Printing Museum in Tartu, Estonia.
Bridget Moser
Bridget Moser is a Toronto-based performance and video artist whose work is suspended between prop comedy, experimental theatre, performance art, absurd literature, existential anxiety and intuitive dance. She has presented work in venues across Canada, including La Centrale, Montreal; VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver; Video Pool, Winnipeg; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Gallery TPW, and Mercer Union, Toronto; The National Arts Centre and Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa; Owens Art Gallery, Sackville; and Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, Halifax. She has presented projects throughout the US and Europe, and has been a resident artist at The Banff Centre and at Fondazione Antonio Ratti in Como, Italy. Her work has been featured in Canadian Art, C Magazine and a recent publication by Mousse Magazine.
Moser was also selected for The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s 2023 Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts.
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In 2013, the emerging artist prizes (now Saunderson Prizes) were named the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, after the acclaimed artist who generously donated the funds for the awards.
Sara Cwynar
Sara Cwynar lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y., and has a B.A. in Design from York University in Toronto. Working sometimes in a studio setting, using collage, assemblage and rephotography, she creates photographic tableaus and sculptural constructions using found objects and images. Her work contains implicit references to a commercial aesthetic, to the history of photographic techniques, and to art history. These are reminders to us that the stories behind familiar images constitute, to a certain extent, the visual framework of a collective consciousness. Yet this narrative is often disrupted by successive, almost baroque, manipulations, revealing some of the aesthetic strategies that guided their initial development. Cwynar’s work has been featured in both solo and group exhibitions at venues that include the Cooper Cole Gallery in Toronto, the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam.
Mathieu Grenier
Photo: Fratzel Descadres
Mathieu Grenier lives and works in Montréal and New York, and has a B.A. in Visual and Media Arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Through a practice that involves installation — generally produced in situ — and photography, he explores the relationships between the artist and creative work, and between the viewer, the work and an exhibition context. Sometimes referential in nature, sometimes humorous, his work draws upon memory to piece together a certain story for the works and their interactions. His works, developed with great attention to detail, suggest a “shift from the devices behind the work to the work itself as device.” Mathieu Grenier’s work has appeared in group exhibitions in Montréal at Les Territoires gallery, Trois Points gallery, Espace Cercle Carré, the Galerie de l’UQAM, and Arprim, as well as at the Musée régional de Rimouski and Lobe in Chicoutimi.
Erdem Taşdelen
Erdem Taşdelen grew up in Switzerland, Germany and Turkey before settling in Vancouver, where he earned an M.A. in Visual Arts from the Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His multidisciplinary practice involves a variety of mediums, such as installation, drawing, sculpture, video, sound, and the artist’s book. He uses text and language in various forms — graphophonology, psychotherapy, repetition, resolution, etc. — to conduct subtle enquiries into subjectivity and its representation. His various projects, characterized by a mordant humour, also involve him in a reflective process that brings self-expression into question within the context of culturally learned behaviours.
Taşdelen’s work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions at Galeri NON, ARTER and the Sanatorium Gallery in Istanbul; at MAK – Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; at the Kunstverein Hannover in Hanover, Germany; at the Republic Gallery, Western Front, 221A, and the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver; and at Oakville Galleries in Toronto.
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In 2013, the emerging artist prizes (now Saunderson Prizes) were named the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, after the acclaimed artist who generously donated the funds for the awards.
Andréanne Godin
Originally from Val-d’Or, Abitibi, Andréanne currently lives and works in Montreal, where she recently completed a Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Recipient of grants from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council for the Arts in 2012, she has recently presented her work in several solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally : B-312 Gallery, the Centre d’exposition Circa, the Concordia University Faculty of Fine Arts Gallery, the Montgrand Gallery in Marseille, the Art Mandat association in Barjols, France, as well as the Romerias de Mayo festival of Holguin, Cuba, count amongst others.
Kim Kielhofner
Kim Kielhofner is a Montreal based artist known for her videos, books, and drawings. Her work is interested in how stories are told and how we understand ourselves within them. She obtained a BFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Québec, and continued her studies in London (UK), obtaining a Master’s of Fine Arts from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. In 2011, she was part of New Contemporaries which toured to the Site Gallery/ S1 Artspace in Sheffield, UK and the Institute of Contemporary Art London, UK. She has shown her work in festivals and galleries internationally including and participated in residencies at the Experimental Television Center and The Red Mansion Foundation (Beijing).
Marlène Renaud-B
Marlène Renaud-B (born 1984) is an interdisciplinary artist living in Montréal, where she pursued Master’s studies at Concordia University after receiving a B.A. in Visual Arts from Université Laval and the École nationale supérieure d’arts de Paris-Cergy in 2010. Her work combines performance, art intervention, installation, sculpture and video. The notions of inbetween, porosity and contamination of spaces and perceptions are of particular interest to her. The artist explores the connections between body and space, whether a studio, a gallery, a public place or a “natural” context. She never hesitates to place herself in the middle of actions that consist, literally or metaphorically, in probing a space. Sound plays an important role in several of her interventions and installations. Her studio work is rounded out by a taste for writing, in which the artist pursues reflections on various forms of chaos and détournement shared during conferences. Marlène Renaud-B. has participated in a wide range of events and festivals in Brazil, France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, the United States, and Canada.
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In 2012, the emerging artist prizes (now Saunderson Prizes) were named the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, after the acclaimed artist who generously donated the funds for the awards.
2012 Prize Recipient
Jordan Bennett
Jordan Bennett is a multi-disciplinary visual artist of Mi’kmaq descent from the west coast of Newfoundland. He currently resides in Edmonton, AB where he is the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at the University of Alberta. Jordan has shown extensively over the past few years across Canada and abroad, in places such as The Museum of Art and Design, New York City, NY, Ottawa Art Gallery, Ottawa ON, Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre, Kingston ON, The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery, St. John's, NL, The Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver BC, the Alternator Artist Run Centre, Kelowna BC amongst many others. His work is derived from a combination of popular and traditional cultural reflections, which he portrays through his passion for and knowledge of pop culture, new media, traditional craft, political issues, and his own cultural practices. Through the processes of sculpture, digital media, text based media, installation, painting, endurance performance and various others, he strives to push boundaries and play with the ideas of re-appropriation, reclamation, participation and the artifact within traditional aboriginal craft, ceremony, and contemporary culture.
Meryl McMaster
Meryl McMaster is an Ontario-based artist and a BFA graduate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University (2010). McMaster is the recipient of various awards and scholarships including the Canon Canada Prize, OCAD Medal, and the Doris McCarthy Scholarship. McMaster has exhibited in various galleries including the Katzman Kamen Gallery, Gallery 44, MacLaren Art Centre, and the Station Gallery. Her work is in various private collections, the Canada Council Art Bank and the Donovan Collection. McMaster’s work goes beyond straight photography by incorporating manual production, performance and self-reflection to talk towards the ideas of identity, perception, myth, narrative, and the environment.
Philip Gray
Born in 1983, Philip is a young artist who began learning how to carve at the age of fifteen under the direction of Salish artist Gerry Sheena. Although as a child Gray was not overly exposed to Tsimshian works of art, he has worked increasingly hard over the years to incorporate the unique design elements of the Tsimshian style into his current practice.
Gray has assisted in the carving of three totem poles, which now stand in various locations of Vancouver. During his first couple of years of practice he only carved during the summer months, while working on community development projects. Since then, Gray has become more focused and has worked hard to improve his carving skills and knowledge by studying Tsimshian carving as well as taking an advanced design course by Robert Davidson. Gray completed the Northwest Coast Jewellery Arts Program at the Native Education College in Vancouver, under Kwakwaka’wakw/Haida artist, Dan Wallace.
Philip has donated many of his designs and carvings to First Nations communities and the Lac Kaien Tsimshian Dance Group, of which he is an active member. His artwork can be found both in local galleries and international locales, including Malaysia, Poland, China, the United States, and Canada.
Exhibitions include Cranmer + Gray, Duel Artist Exhibition, Coastal Peoples Fine Arts Gallery. Vancouver, BC (2012); Challenging Traditions, Group Exhibition, McMichael Canadian Art Gallery. Kleinburg, ON (2009); and Continuum: Vision and Creativity on the Northwest Coast, Group Exhibition, Bill Reid Art Gallery. Vancouver, BC.
