Ontario artist Kapwani Kiwanga wins the $ 100,000 Sobey Award

A provocative display of colorful panels and painted walls mimicking the color scheme of prisons and hospitals earned Kapwani Kiwanga the art prize in Canada.

Kiwanga, who represented Ontario in a national competition, is the winner of the $ 100,000 Sobey Art Award for 2018. This award was announced at the annual Sobey Art Award Gala, which took place Wednesday night at the Museum. Canada's Fine Arts in Ottawa. Kiwanga received the prize from last year's winner, Ursula Johnson.

"The Sobey Art Award is a humbling encouragement to continue to do a job that requires us to look back at the company and its past," Kiwanga said in a statement provided by NGC, adding that the award would allow him to "focus more on my work. and push it further in the years to come, "and thanking" all those who believed, encouraged, supported, questioned, trusted, took the question, pushed, shared, challenged and anxious ".

Kiwanga is the 15th Canadian artist under 40 to win this annual award. She beat four other finalists: Jordan Bennett of the Atlantic, Jon Rafman of Quebec, Joi T. Arcand representing the Prairies and the North, and Jeneen Frei Njootli of the West Coast and Yukon. These four also earn $ 25,000 each.

Kiwanga's works are both daring and subtle interventions in the viewer's space that reproduce some of the effects of institutional architecture and, in a year dominated by sculptural installations, the jury found them compelling at both visually and critically.

"Kapwani Kiwanga creates a visual language to rethink the complexities and peripheries of history," said the jury in its statement. "Use of archival materials and referencing of anthropology, agriculture and urban design, among other sources; it reveals the global effects of the colonial project. In doing so, it tackles hidden authoritarian structures, institutional arrangements 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 the NGC. The Sobey Award, originally created as a biennial award in 2002 to encourage the development of Canadian contemporary art, awards $ 2,000 each to the remaining 20 artists on the long list, three of which have also received international artistic residencies.

An exhibition of the works of the five selected artists, including Kiwanga, is on display at the NGC until February 10, 2019.