The winner of the 2024 Audain Prize for the Visible Arts was introduced Tuesday (17 September) in Vancouver, recognising the distinguished Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore with a money prize of C$100,000 ($73,500). A member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe) primarily based in Vancouver and Toronto, Belmore is a multidisciplinary artist recognised internationally for her efficiency artwork, photo-based work and site-specific sculptural installations.
Rooted within the political and social realities of Indigenous communities, for many years Belmore’s artwork has made evocative connections between our bodies, land and language. In 2023 for instance, she was commissioned by the Polygon Gallery, in collaboration with the Burrard Arts Basis, to create a large-format public work in North Vancouver. The fee, Hacer Memoria (2023), introduced a collection of blue and orange shirts manufactured from tarpaulin, referencing the resilience of residential college survivors and providing a possibility for the general public to acknowledge Indigenous folks.
Rebecca Belmore, Hacer Memoria, 2023, set up view on the Polygon Gallery Picture credit score: Sarah Akeem Nermo
The Audain Prize ceremony within the Pacific ballroom of the Lodge Vancouver unfolded with a curious juxtaposition of the colonial and the decolonial, which in some ways epitomises the town’s artwork scene—and likewise echoes Belmore’s work. Only a few hundred metres from the Vancouver Artwork Gallery (VAG)—just like the lodge, one other grand colonial edifice and a forme courthouse—was the positioning of Belmore’s 2010 protest efficiency artwork piece Value. After a dispute along with her gallery, she staged a scene below a banner declaring: “I’m Value Extra/Than One Million/{Dollars}/To My Individuals .” In entrance of VAG, she depicted herself as a sort of crucified Indigenous artist in a strong act of efficiency.
The Audain Prize ceremony opened with a conventional Scottish bagpiper ushering in Michael Audain, chairman of the Audain Basis, in addition to the lieutenant governor of British Columbia, Janet Austin, a consultant of King Charles III. This was adopted by a conventional land acknowledgement from a neighborhood Squamish Nation artist named Xwalacktun. For a second, the scene evoked Belmore’s 2008 efficiency Victorious, through which she constructed a costume of newspaper and honey for an Indigenous lady standing in for Queen Victoria.
Rebecca Belmore, Victorious, 2008, Efficiency Picture credit score: Harold Coego
The group of native artists, sellers and patrons was saved in suspense concerning the identification of this 12 months’s prize winner till head of jury Scott Watson took the stage to announce the winner. The previous director of the Morris and Helen Belkin Artwork Gallery on the College of British Columbia—which hosted Belmore’s breakthrough solo exhibition in 2002, earlier than she went on to characterize Canada on the 2005 Venice Biennale, adopted the announcement with a strong anecdote illustrating the artist’s difficult relationship with the nation.
On the after-party for an exhibition opening on the Brooklyn Museum in 2007, Watson recounted Belmore telling him that one of many American artists in attendance had shouted out at her: “Hey Canada—sing one thing!’” She responded by singing the nationwide anthem, O Canada, in each official languages, whereas nearly strangling herself with a shawl.
Watson advised The Artwork Newspaper that the jury was unanimous in its choice to award Belmore the prize due to her “internationally superb CV”.Belmore has acquired the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Basis’s Viva Award in 2004, the Hnatyshyn Visible Arts Award in 2009, the Governor Basic’s Award in Visible and Media Arts in 2013 and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize 2016. “Her star continues to be rising,” Watson stated, “and I assumed it might be good for her and for the award to have such a visual particular person doing such related and vital work.
Rebecca Belmore’s ishkode (fireplace) 2022) was included within the 2022 Whitney Biennial Picture credit score: Scott Benesiinaabandan
Her latest solo exhibitions embody Turbulent Water at Griffith College in Brisbane, Australia (2021), Reservoir on the Audain Artwork Museum in Whistler, British Columbia (2019) and Dealing with the Monumental on the Artwork Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (2018). She has additionally participated in lots of high-profile recurring worldwide exhibitions, together with the Whitney Biennial in 2022, the Istanbul Biennial in 2019 and documenta 14 in 2017. She additionally participated in aabaakwad, an Indigenous-led gathering on the Venice Biennale in 2022.
Belmore thanked Audain for his “ongoing generosity” and “dedication to Indigenous artwork”.
She advised The Artwork Newspaper that the prize cash would permit her to work on an upcoming undertaking debuting on the Hawai’i Triennial in February 2025. It’s a sculptural work, she stated, involving hammering nails into Victorian furnishings as a method of “piercing the pores and skin of colonialism… with a purpose to reconstruct the long run”. Pointing to the chair she was sitting on on the Lodge Vancouver, coated in luxurious brocade, she added: “Furnishings that appears rather a lot like this.”
Previous winners of the Audain Prize embody the Lakota conceptual artist Dana Claxton, the picture conceptualist Ian Wallace and the sculptor and hereditary Haida chief James Hart.
