The winner of this prize given in consultation with the Sobey Foundation for the Arts (FSA) will be selected from this “long list” of 30 finalists fairly divided into six categories representing the major regions of Canada.
The names of the six artists selected in the short list (one candidate per region) will be revealed on June 3. These six elected officials will be the subject of a special exhibition presented to the MBAC from October 3. The name of the artist (or collective) who will win the award will be announced on November 8.
Québec
Michelle Lacombe. (Archives)
The five visual artists selected in Quebec are Joyce Joumaa, Michelle Lacombe, Leisure (an artistic tandem made up of Susannah Wesley and Meredith Carruthers), Malena Szlam Salazar and Swapnaa Tamhane.
The author and videographer of Lebanese origin Joyce Joumaa shares her time and activities between Montreal, Amsterdam and Beirut. The practice of Michelle Lacombe is located at the crossroads of body art, visual arts and “art action”.
Gathered within the Leisure duo since 2004, Montrealers Susannah Wesley and Meredith Carruthers scrutinize and seek to deconstruct the social speeches that enamel artistic representations; Their approaches oscillate between archival research, interviews with other practitioners or art theorists, and its own artistic production.
Experimental filmmaker, the Montreal artist (of Chilean origin) Malena Szlam Salazar intertwines cinematographic art and visual installation.
The visual artist based in Montreal Swapnaa Tamhane. (Brandon Brookbank)
A Montreal adoption (she was born in Toronto and spent a large part of her youth in India), Swapnaa Tamhane seeks, as an artist, but also as conservative and author, to “resist” the social constructions inherited from colonialism.
More detailed biographies of finalist artists are posted on the page that the MBAC devotes to the Sobey Prize.
Toronto artist Sandra Brewster. (Live Morgan/Olygakorpergallery.com)
Ontario
Visual artists representing Ontario are Sandra Brewster, Christian Chapman, Sarindar Dhaliwal, Morris Lum and Shellie Zhang.
The Torontoise Sandra Brewster is interested in the links between movement and identity, this through a wide range of mediums.
Toronto photographer Morris Lum. (Archives)
Each in his own way, the photographer Morris Lum (who adopts a documentary approach) and the multidisciplinary artist Shellie Zhang ‘tells’ the Sino-Canadian community, by approaching the migration, the memory, the translation or the evolution of the districts of Chinatown through North America.
Multidisciplinary artist claiming to be Fort William’s First Nation, Christian Chapman is drunk at his Anishinaabée roots to feed a work full of “irreverence”, which is available in canvases, in drawings, in images retouched to the computer, in murals or in prints.
Some works signed Christian Chapman, visual artist Anishinaabé who assumes his irreverence. (Instagram)
Other regions
For the Atlantic region, it is the hangama artists Amiri, Erin Hunt, Megan Samms, Miya Turnbull and Nelson White that were selected in the Sobey price race.
Charles Campbell, Hazel Meyer, Michelle Sound, Charlene Vickers and Tania Willard find themselves finalists in the Pacific region.
The meadows will be represented by Christina Battle, Molly JF Caldwell, Erika Jean Lincoln, Jessie Ray Short as well as Chukwudubem Ukaigure.
To represent the circumpolar region (created last year) were selected Darcie Bernhardt, Tarralik Duffy, Megan Jensen, Shirley Moorhouse and Mathew Nuqingaq.
$ 100,000 at the key
The Sobey price competition has among the most generous scholarships in the country, in the field of visual arts. The 30 finalist artists will share $ 465,000 this year, thanks to the FSB.
The prize winner will inherit $ 100,000. The six artists who will succeed in sneaking into the short list (unveiled on June 3) will receive $ 25,000, while those on the long list will grab $ 10,000 each.
Divya Mehra, winner of the Sobey Prize for the 2022 Arts, is surrounded by Jonathan Shaughnessy, director of the Conservation initiatives of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Canada and Rob Sobey, president of the Sobey Foundation Council for the Arts. (Canada Museum of Fine Arts)
“The Sobey Prize for the Arts – which is in its 22nd year of existence – is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the contemporary cultural composition of Canada,” suggested the president of the Sobey Foundation for the Arts, Rob Sobey, after having expressed his “most sincere congratulations” to each of the finalists.
“This year’s selection is a testaler and the quality of contemporary artistic creation in this country,” said the director of Curatorial initiatives of the MBAC, Jonathan Shaughnessy, who is also president of the jury of the Sobey 2025 Prize.
Information (and biography of finalists): Canada Fine Arts Museum
