Manitoba multidisciplinary artist Divya Mehra wins the prestigious Sobey Art Award, including a $100,000 grant. She received her award Wednesday night at a ceremony at the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in Ottawa. Quebec artist Stanley Juillet had also been selected from the short list of five finalists.
“This is a very important prize in the visual arts community in Canada, in particular thanks to the magnitude of the scholarships that are awarded […]but also because it propels the careers of the laureates by offering them great visibility,” says Josée-Britanie Mallet, Senior Officer, Public and Media Relations at the NGC.
Mme Mallet recalls that 25 finalists, selected from the “long list”, receive $10,000, and that the five finalists from the “short list”, including this year Stanley February, receive $25,000. “They’re all winners,” she said. The five finalists are also the subject of an exhibition at the NGC, which is presented until March 12, 2023.
Through an approach akin to conceptual art, Divya Mehra’s work encompasses, among others, video art, photography, drawing, performance, and installation. The artist tackles questions of gender, identity, institutional criticism, and resistance. Already well established in the contemporary art world in Canada and the United States, she was nominated for the Sobey Prize in 2013, 2014, and 2017, before winning this year.
“The jury found Divya Mehra’s work to be both timely and sophisticated in its approach to systems of cultural representation, production and authority. […] His most recent explorations have turned to questions of repatriation, ownership and patterns of cultural consumption that fundamentally involve institutions and their audiences,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director of Curatorial Initiatives at the NGC and Chair of the Sobey Prize Jury. for the arts 2022, by press release.
An exhibition of the five finalists at the NGC
The five finalists of the short list of the Sobeys prize are therefore brought together in an exhibition at the Ottawa museum. Bringing together five very different practices, the exhibition “is rooted in the lived experience of the finalist artists, and the works on display reflect their different origins and their unique ways of seeing and thinking the world, and of inhabiting it, broadening the meaning of being a “Canadian” artist”, indicates the NGC, in a press release.
The five finalists each represent a region of Canada. Quebecer Stanley Juillet exhibits alongside Tyshan Wright (Atlantic), Azza El Siddique (Ontario), Krystle Silverfox (West Coast and Yukon), and of course, Divya Mehra, Prairies and North.
Mr. February has been the subject of many exhibitions in recent years, including Possible lives / Menm vye tintinpresent at the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) last winter, or even Museum of Current Art / Department of Invisibles (MAADI), presented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts last summer.
The Sobey Prize is awarded jointly by the Sobey Foundation for the Arts and the NGC. It totals $400,000 in scholarships, paid to 25 artists.