Joi T Arcand - Canadian Art Report on Sobey Award Short List
Canadian Art
NEWS / MAY 29, 2018
An Unprecedented Sobey Shortlist
For the first time in the award’s history, four out of five finalists are BIPOC
by Leah Sandals (exerpt from Canadian Art website)
The Sobey Art Award shortlist was released this morning, and it offers some important firsts. This year, the majority of the artists named as finalists—three out of five—are Indigenous. This is the first time that has happened. And for the first year ever, a Black woman artist has been named a finalist. One of these five finalists will be named winner of the (newly augmented) $100,000 Sobey Art Award grand prize on November 14. At that time, $25,000 will be awarded to each of the other four finalists as well.
Shortlisted artists: Joi T Arcand, Jordan Bennett, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Kapwani Kiwanga and Jon Rafman.
JOI T. ARCAND
Shortlisted for the Prairies and the North region, Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in central Saskatchewan (Treaty 6 Territory) and is currently based in Ottawa. In recent years, Arcand has become known for creating public signage and neon signage in nehiyawēwin syllabics (or Plains Cree (Y dialect) language). For instance, in a recent exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, she installed a blue neon sign that when translated to English reads, “I want to speak Cree.” Another work currently on view outside a Banff Centre building can be translated as “I don’t have my words.” As Arcand has told the CBC, “As a person just walking down the street, I started to see the shapes of the syllables in traffic signs…So I just decided — what would the world look like through this lens?”
Leah Sandals
Leah Sandals is a writer and editor based in Toronto. Her arts journalism has appeared in the Toronto Star, National Post and Globe and Mail, among other publications, and her creative work has been published in Prism, Room and Freefall. She can be reached via leahsandals.ca.