A provocative display of coloured panels and painted walls mimicking the colour schemes of prisons and hospitals has earned Kapwani Kiwanga the richest art prize in Canada.
Kiwanga, who was representing Ontario in a national contest, is the winner of the $100,000 Sobey Art Award for 2018. The award was announced at the annual Sobey Art Award gala held Wednesday evening at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Kiwanga was presented the award by last year’s winner, Ursula Johnson.
“The Sobey Art Award is a humbling encouragement to continue to make work that asks us to look anew at society and its past,” Kiwanga said in a statement provided by NGC, adding the award would allow her “to focus more intently on my work and push it further in the years to come,” and thanking “all those who have believed, encouraged, supported, called into question, trusted, taken issue, pushed, shared, disputed, and cared.”
Kiwanga is the 15th Canadian artist under the age of 40 to win the now-annual award. She beat out four other finalists: Jordan Bennett from the Atlantic region, Jon Rafman from Quebec, Joi T. Arcand, representing the Prairies and the North, and Jeneen Frei Njootli from the West Coast and Yukon. These four also win $25,000 each.
Kiwanga’s works are bold yet subtle interventions into the viewer’s space that reproduce some of the effects of institutional architecture and, in a year dominated by sculptural installation, the jury found them both visually compelling and critically engaged.
“Kapwani Kiwanga creates a visual language to reconsider complexities and peripheries of history,” the jury said in its statement. “Using archival materials and referencing anthropology, agriculture, and urban design, among other sources; she reveals global effects of the colonial project. In so doing, she addresses hidden authoritarian structures, institutional devices, and power imbalances to help us see the world differently.”
The seven-member jury was chaired by Josée Drouin-Brisebois, senior curator of contemporary art at NGC. The Sobey Award, originally established as a biennial award in 2002 to encourage developments in contemporary Canadian art, hands out $2,000 each to the remaining 20 artists on the long list, three of whom are also given international artistic residencies.
An exhibition of the work of the five shortlisted artists, including Kiwanga’s, is on display at NGC until Feb. 10, 2019.
Kate Taylor