Clockwise from top left: Jason Sikoak, Zoe Kreye, Marigold Santos, Chun Hua Catherine Dong, Nico Williams, Eve Tagny and Frances Adair McKenzie.
Each year, the Sobey Art Award — the top prize for contemporary art in Canada and among the most generous in the world — recognizes the talent of the country’s foremost visual artists. The 2024 longlist, announced in May, includes seven Concordia alumni from the university’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
Established in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation and now presented by the National Gallery of Canada, the award showcases emerging artists from six areas across Canada, including the newly added Circumpolar region.
The winner of the 2024 award will receive $100,000, with $25,000 distributed to each of the six shortlisted artists and $10,000 to the remaining longlisted artists. The shortlisted candidates — to be announced in June — will also be featured in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in the fall.
Sixty-six Concordia artists have been longlisted for the award since its inception. Among those, seven have gone on to win the prize: Adam Basanta, MA 13; Sabrina Ratté, BFA 05, MFA 12; Nadia Myre, MFA 03; Abbas Akhavan, BFA 04; Raphaëlle de Groot; Daniel Barrow and Michel de Broin.
Learn about the Concordia artists among the 2024 longlist:
With a focus on transformation, collective experience and the disembodiment of Western culture, Zoe Kreye’s work combines installation, performance and sculpture. She teaches at the Emily Carr University of Art + Design and has produced several social-practice projects in Vancouver and Berlin.
Sculptor and animator Frances Adair Mckenzie expands her research by exploring new technologies and tools such as artificial intelligence. Her experimentation across disciplines highlights the stability of identity and the consumption of desire, among other themes. Her video work has been exhibited globally, and she was the recipient of the 2023 Canadian Screen Art Award for Best Immersive Experience Fiction.
Born in the Philippines and based in Calgary, Marigold Santos’s interdisciplinary practice explores themes of heritage, folklore, motherwork and decolonization through the otherworldly. She works with various media, including painting, drawing and sculpture. Her art is currently on display at Montreal’s PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art until September 8.
Montreal-based Eve Tagny examines gardens and landscapes as sites of memory, power dynamics and colonial legacies. Her multidisciplinary work involves lens-based mediums, installation, text and performance to explore grief and resiliency in relation to nature. In 2023, she performed at the Swiss Institute in New York City and at Nuit Blanche in Toronto.
Chun Hua Catherine Dong is a Chinese-born, Montreal-based multimedia artist. Their practice began with performance art and now includes media art situated within the context of global feminism. Dong has performed at art festivals around the world, including in Chicago, New York, Venice and Dublin, and was the winner of the Cultural Diversity in Visual Arts Award from the Conseil des arts de Montréal in 2021.
Nico Williams is an Anishinaabe artist from Aamjiwnaang First Nation and is now based in Montreal. His sculptural beadwork-centered practice is multidisciplinary and collaborative — examining interconnections between people, objects, place and language. Williams was Concordia’s 2021 winner of the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art.
An interdisciplinary Inuk artist from Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Jason Sikoak’s work delves into spirituality, colonialism, environmental issues, and contemporary and historical Inuit life. Their artwork was also twice featured on commemorative coins produced by the Royal Canadian Mint.
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