Faye HeavyShield Wins Gershon Iskowitz Prize

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Faye Heavyshield with installation "wave" (2018) created for Remai Modern, Saskatoon (courtesy of the artist)

Blackfoot artist Faye HeavyShield is the recipient of this year's Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

For the first time, the prize includes a $75,000 cash award, as well as the usual solo exhibition, to be held next year at the AGO, the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation announced Wednesday. 

The prize is presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada.

HeavyShield, who draws on her experiences of traditional ways of life, has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at national and international institutions, and has work in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa and the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., among others.

A member of the Blackfoot Confederacy from the Kainai (Blood) Nation in southern Alberta, she received the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Distinguished Artist Award in 2021.

Her installations and sculptures use natural materials, imagery and sounds to reflect on concepts of family, home and relationship with the land on which she grew up and where she still lives. Minimalist in appearance, her works feature repeating forms and recurrent motifs, including spirals, circles, grids and lines.

The jury also cited her role as a mentor, and the strength she has shown within the Indigenous community. 

The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation was established by Toronto painter Gershon Iskowitz before his death in 1988 to manage the prize, which it now does in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Previous recipients include such prominent artists as Shuvinai Ashoona, Liz Magor, Betty Goodwin, General Idea, Stan Douglas, Geoffrey Farmer, Brian Jungen, Rebecca Belmore and Ken Lum. 

Lum's prize exhibition, Death and Furniture, is now on view at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon and will move on to the AGO later this year.  

This year's jurors were Valérie Blass, who won the prize in 2017; Catherine Crowston, director of the Art Gallery of Alberta; Felicia Gay, a curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina; trustees of the Foundation Gerald McMaster, an artist, curator and professor at OCAD University in Toronto; and Stephan Jost, the CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Source: Gershon Iskowitz Foundation and Art Gallery of Ontario