Nadia Myre a Quebec-based Algonquin artist known for using small, craft-based media to make a big aesthetic and political impact—has won the $50,000 first place prize at this year’s Sobey Art Award.
The award win was announced November 19th at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, where an exhibition of the Sobey Award finalists continues until January 11, 2015.
“Myre has built a distinctive visual vocabulary by translating her experience and that of others into works that employ traditional crafts within a contemporary, multidisciplinary practice,” the prize jury said in a release. “Her artwork creates a symbolic image of wounding and resilience that conveys something deeply human while addressing urgent social concerns.”
Born in 1974 in Montreal, Myre is known for work that addresses identity, language, longing and loss—often conveyed through media related to traditional Aboriginal beadwork or stitchery.
The title of Myre’s 2013 work For those who cannot speak: the land, the water, the animals and the future generations, for instance, was inspired by a declaration read by Algonquin kokoms (grandmothers) on Parliament Hill on January 11, 2013. The piece consisted of a long black-and-white beaded belt—one somewhat reminiscent of the wampum belt form—that was blown up photographically to 23 metres long for the National Gallery of Canada’s recent indigenous art survey “Sakahàn.”
Another notable Myre work is Indian Act (2000–2003), which covered all 56 pages of the titular Canadian legislation with red and white beads—white beads replaced the words of the act, while the red beads replaced the negative space. The project also had a collaborative aspect, with more than 200 friends, colleagues and strangers pitching in to complete the beading on the project.
Collaboration and group process also comes to the fore in Myre’s Scar Project, which commenced in 2005. In this project, viewers and members of the public are invited to sew, on canvas, representations of their own physical, emotional, psychological or spiritual scars. Participants were also encouraged to share and record related stories, with more than 800 scars and stories collected in the course of the project.
A graduate of Camosun College (1995), Emily Carr (1997), and Concordia University (MFA, 2002), Myre is included in “Formes et Paroles” at the Musée Dapper in Paris, the 2014 Shanghai Biennale and “Before and After the Horizon: Anishinabe Artists of the Great Lakes” at the Art Gallery of Ontario
Article from http://canadianart.ca/news/2014/11/19/nadia-myre-sobey-art-award/
