2024 Award

CATEGORY: STILL IMAGE

Moni Omubor

The Backroom, 2023
Digital Images  

The Backroom is a triptych of 3D-rendered black and white images that investigate the remnants of colonialism in the artist’s psyche as a Nigerian person of Yoruba ancestry. Set in an imagined museum and playing with aesthetics of afro-surrealism, each panel features selected elements of Yoruba culture. Though this space is speculative in nature and exists outside of our physical reality, it utilizes “western” museum display strategies typically reserved for representing colonized cultures and identities. Omubor subverts these tactics to facilitate deprogramming and to question associated narratives, leveraging the boundlessness of a place untethered by time or physical constraints.  

Moni Omubor is a Lagos-born visual artist and designer based in Lethbridge, Alberta. Her new media practice uses speculative fiction to explore the interconnectedness of Black diasporic realities and postcolonial Nigerian identity. She holds a B.Sc. in Architecture and an MFA in New Media from the University of Lethbridge and is a member of the Lethbridge-based Black art collective, We’re Here Too. 

CATEGORY: MOVING IMAGE

Carmilla Sumantry

GRWM, 2024
Animation; 3:38
Audio by Apple Cabrera

GRWM is an acronym for “Get Ready With Me,” referencing a genre of videos by beauty influencers who transform their appearance on camera before going out in public. Created in response to the relentless cycle of ad-driven beauty recommendations that plague our social media feeds, the work features an amorphous, fleshy blob that is cut open, molded, pierced and adorned. GRWM serves as a cultural observation on the impact of social media beauty trends and the accelerated normalization of extreme body modifications, highlighting the absurdity of this pursuit that often comes at the risk of opposite outcomes  

Carmilla Sumantry is an interdisciplinary creative based in so-called Vancouver, with a background in industrial design, 3D art, and animation. Her practice explores the relationship between emerging creative technology and art through an existential lens informed by her second-generation Indonesian-Canadian heritage and queer identity.

CATEGORY: 2D INTERACTIVE

Studio Ekosi

Mikiwam, 2023
Game art, dimensions variable  

Mikiwam is an Indigenous fantasy narrative about complex relationships, magic, and post-colonial futures. The game features Awâsis, a young woman who recently moved back to her mother’s home community, where she struggles with visions she can’t control while navigating strained relationships with her family. After being taken on as an apprentice by the mysterious healer, Matsi, she learns how to use her unique Gift in seeing people’s moods as elements that can be influenced through magical teas. As Awâsis, players embark on her journey to reconnect with her estranged home and ultimately find her place in a fractured, healing world. 

Studio Ekosi is Caeleigh and Keara Lightning, mixed Irish and Nehiyaw sisters based in Edmonton, Alberta. Caeleigh is a Two-Spirit artist and illustrator whose work explores themes of queerness and interconnectivity, and Keara is a PhD student at the University of Alberta, where she advocates for Indigenous-led scientific research. Together, they create narrative games about Indigenous futures. 

CATEGORY: EXTENDED REALITY

Quinn Hopkins

Stellar Narratives, 2024
Augmented Reality  

Stellar Narratives bridges the gap between Anishinaabe night sky stories and the city. With each season, a new chapter unfolds, showcasing the constellations that have guided Anishinaabe wisdom for generations. Hopkins uses augmented reality as a new way of sharing stories, connecting audiences to the oral traditions that have long shaped Indigenous knowledge. In inviting urban Indigenous people to look up and rediscover the ancestral stories etched in the stars above them, the work serves as a reminder that the wisdom of the land is still with us, even in the heart of the city. 

Quinn Hopkins is a Toronto-based artist working at the intersection of Urban Indigenous culture and new media, crafting a vibrant dialogue between Indigenous history, urban life, and futuristic visions. Rooted in Anishinaabe-Métis traditions, he reimagines Indigenous iconography for the modern era. His digital creations and immersive installations have been presented at Evergreen Brick Works, Toronto; Thunder Bay Art Gallery; and Hart House at the University of Toronto. 

CATEGORY: 3D INSTALLATION

Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas

the museum of the copy/pasted identities, 2022
Sculptural and multi-channel video installation  

the museum of the copy/pasted identities features a series of digital sculptures set within a digital environment based on South American colonial architecture. The work delves into the visual history and legacies of colonialism in anthropological museums, exploring how otherness is produced through both exhibition displays and digital networks. Gonzalez-Rosas crafts a speculative archeology of the body through photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and CGI-generated avatars, challenging normative approaches to self-representation. The resulting multimedia installation exposes the performativity of contemporary digital self image-making and draws critical connections to strategies of representation within cultural institutions.   

Francisco Gonzalez-Rosas (he/they) is a Chilean performance and new media artist based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Their practice explores existing and speculative crossovers between body and technology, emphasizing the politics of these encounters. Francisco holds an MFA in Intermedia from Concordia University, Montreal, and a BA in Acting from Finis Terrae University, Santiago, and their work has been included in exhibitions at Fondation Phi, Montreal; Centre Caravansérail, Rimouski; and Centre for Culture & Technology, Toronto. 

Crystal Mowry

Crystal Mowry (she/her) is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collection, and publishing activities for over a decade.  She has written texts for various artist-focused books on the work of Deanna Bowen, Shary Boyle, Brendan Fernandes, Maggie Groat, and others. She was born in Toronto and is currently based in Treaty 4 (Regina). 

Kara Stone

Kara Stone is an artist and scholar making work about psychosocial disability, sexuality, and the environment. She works in different media but most often in interactive art and experimental videogames. Her artwork has been featured in The Atlantic, Wired, and VICE, and exhibited at Athens Digital Art Festival in Greece, Vector Game Art Festival in Toronto, Canada and a solo exhibition at Babycastles in New York City, USA. She holds a PhD in Film and Digital Media with a designated emphasis in Feminist Studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She is an Assistant Professor at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Canada. 

Skawennati

Skawennati investigates history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her artistic practice questions our relationships with technology and highlights Indigenous people in the future. Her machinimas and machinmagraphs (movies and still images made in virtual environments), textiles and sculpture have been presented internationally and collected by the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal and the Thoma Foundation, among others. Residing in Montreal, she co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace. 

Zach Blas

Zach Blas is an artist, filmmaker, writer, and Assistant Professor of Visual Studies at the University of Toronto. His practice spans installation, moving image, computation, theory, and performance. Recent exhibitions include CULTUS, Secession, Vienna; CONNECTING, KANAL-Centre Pompidou, Brussels; Refigured, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the 12th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art; Uncanny Valley: Being Human in the Age of AI at the de Young Museum, San Francisco; and the 12th Gwangju Biennale. His 2021 artist monograph Unknown Ideals is published by Sternberg Press. 

Diana Lynn VanderMeulen