2025 Recipients

The jury recognizes Eva for her bold digital exploration of speculative, queer reproductive organs—forms that echo the anatomical while also departing into the surreal. Her work confronts feminist biopolitics and the social construction of reproductive bodies in relation to commodification, fetishization, and the pressures of heteronormativity. Glossy, fleshy, and intricately entangled, these sculptural renderings pulse with both vulnerability and power. Distinct in concept and form, Eva’s radical refusal of AI in favor of meticulously modeled, artist-driven digital creation asserts both an aesthetic and political stance, making the work as unsettling as it is striking. 

– Bomi Yook, media artist and 2023 EDAA recipient | 2025 EDAA guest judge

Alex’s work stood out to the jury for its refreshing stillness and methodical approach to moving image creation. The panning motion over and under a disembodied geological mass immersed in a sea of chroma-key blue read like a soft invasion of our computer screens, a welcome interruption to their usual frenetic energy. By tracing a non-linear pathway along this abstracted embodiment of Barbados’ East Coast shoreland, Alex has succeeded in prioritizing disorientation and desire paths over the imposed, linear, and violent structures of colonial impositions and forced migrations. 

– Alex Bowron, Assistant Curator, EQ Bank | 2025 EDAA judge

In Cadin’s 2D interactive game “El Cumbiatron”, players are thrown into the polyrhythms of Cumbia, an enduring Latin American music and dance form. Within a frenzied dance party, the player must simultaneously collect hearts, spin in time to the beat, and dance on stars. As an artist-created game, “El Cumbiatron” cleverly reengineers 8-bit pixel gameplay aesthetics and mechanics through a decolonial, Latinx lens. In Cadin’s nostalgic evocation of a diverse culture that emerged from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, “El Cumbiatron” invites players into a hand-coded third-space paradigm. The jury recognizes Cadin’s savvy, but also deeply felt, modification of dance rhythm games.    

– Rea McNamara, writer and curator | 2025 EDAA guest juror

In “No Me Demoro” visitors are invited to navigate a domestic space informed by Laura’s childhood memories of Bogota, Colombia. The jurors were impressed by playful and thoughtful architectural environment, imbued with the nostalgia of an immigrant experience. Combining architectural references from Caraballo’s home city of Bogota and current home in Montreal, the jurors were impressed by the artist’s effort to include unique and distinctive details, such as Powerpuff Girl bedsheets and religious home decor, giving the feeling of moving through the artist’s own memory palace. This is a promising start for Laura we look forward to watching how her practice will continue to grow. 

– Lillian O’Brien Davis, Associate Curator, MacKenzie Art Gallery | 2025 EDAA guest judge

“Virtual Shiva” shows a spectacular alignment of conceptual ideas and mechanical design. It asks to reconsider the relationship between the avatar, the player, and the inconsistent but generative nature of systems. It presents glitch as operable power, as avenue for (re)creation, as decolonial tool. While many games spaces rely on filmic elements to carry their narratives, Kahani’s work embeds is stories in the uniquely active elements of the medium – in action and play. The jury is thrilled to honour this work, for its entwinement of cultural, spiritual and technological meaning, its clever use of space and environment, and its insistence on experimental play. 

– Maxwell Lander, Assistant Professor of New Media, Toronto Metropolitan University | 2025 EDAA guest judge