Divya Mehra Wins 2022 Sobey Art Award
Divya Mehra
Winnipeg artist Divya Mehra has won this year’s $100,000 Sobey Art Award, one of the top prizes for Canadian visual artists.
“It’s an honour to be recognized and celebrated for your work in this way,” Mehra said after the announcement today at a ceremony at the National Gallery of Canada.
Mehra’s work is “resoundingly timely and sophisticated in addressing systems of cultural representation, production, and authority,” said jury chair Jonathan Shaughnessy.
“Untethered to any specific medium, the impact of Mehra’s practice extends beyond established constructs of art,” said Shaughnessy, the gallery’s director of curatorial initiatives.
“Her approach is defined by its sharp wit, disarmingly playful allure and attentiveness to language and aesthetics. Her most recent explorations turn towards issues of repatriation, ownership, and modes of cultural consumption that fundamentally implicate both institutions and their publics.”
The other four artists on the short list – Krystle Silverfox, Azza El Siddique, Stanley Février and Tyshan Wright – each receive $25,000. The work of all five artists is on view at the Ottawa gallery until March 12.
Mehra incorporates found artifacts and ready-made objects as active signifiers of resistance in a multitude of forms, including photo, video, film, sculpture, print, drawing, performance, installation and advertising. Her works serve as reminders of the difficult realities of displacement, loss, neutrality and oppression.
Recent projects include From India to Canada and back to India (There is nothing I can possess which you cannot take away). Mehra’s research for the exhibition at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina led to the repatriation and institutional deaccession of a looted artifact from India.
Mehra, who represents the Prairies and the North, holds an MFA from Columbia University in New York City.
She was chosen by a jury of five Canadian curators and one international juror. They selected 25 artists for the long list – five from each of five regions of Canada. One artist from each region was selected for the short list.
The jury members are Rui Mateus Amaral, adjunct curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto; John Hampton, executive director of the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina; Elliott Ramsey, curator at the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver; Laura Ritchie, director of the MSVU Art Gallery in Halifax; Cheryl Sim, managing director of the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal; and Franklin Sirmans, director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
The award is administered by the National Gallery of Canada with financial support from the Sobey Art Foundation.
