The Lind Prize 2022 exhibition captures the ingenuity of contemporary image-making
From contact printing to digital manipulation, the show at The Polygon Gallery reflects the diversity of the photographic medium
Aaron Leon, 7⟨ʔ⟩: Reciprocity Values, 2021, video still.
The Polygon Gallery presents The Lind Prize 2022 exhibition from December 10 to January 29, 2023; opening reception is on December 15 at 7 pm
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MEDIUM is the focus of the Lind Prize 2022 exhibition. Featuring works by finalists of the 7th annual Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, the show at The Polygon Gallery captures the vast diversity of the genre.
“This year, the seven finalists’ works span a range of approaches to photography, including video, analogue photography, contact printing, and digital manipulation,” Reid Shier, director of The Polygon Gallery, tells Stir. “Each practice is unique. Together, they speak to the variety and ingenuity of contemporary image-making.”
The Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize is awarded annually to an emerging B.C.-based artist working across the mediums of film, photography, or video. Artists are nominated by people entrenched in the field of contemporary art across the province, including curators, senior artists, and faculty from established arts institutions, organizations, and post-secondary programs. To celebrate the fifth anniversary of The Polygon Gallery’s opening, this year’s cash prize has been increased to $10,000 (from $5,000) through the support of Lind, a member of the Order of Canada and vice chair of the board of Rogers. Additionally, each shortlisted artist will receive $2,500 through the support of Quay North Urban Development.
Katayoon Yousefbigloo How to Lift a Curse (Amazing Transformation Video!), 2022, video still.
Selected from more than 50 nominations, the 2022 finalists are Simranpreet Anand, Wei Chen, Sidney Gordon, Natasha Katedralis, Jake Kimble, Aaron Leon, and Katayoon Yousefbigloo.
With a BFA with honours in visual arts and a second major in psychology from UBC, Anand “interrogates the so-called neutral audience in multicultural society through the usage of materials that resonate beyond the typical art gallery context”, according to a release. Chen earned a diploma in photography with graduate honours at Focal Point: The Visual Art Learning Centre and is now in his final year of his BFA Kwantlen Polytechnic University. Gordon, who has a BMA in film and screen arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Designs, focuses on experimental analog filmmaking and alternative photography through eco/chemical processes that challenge the way viewers conventionally interact with everyday structures and materials. Katedralis, who has a BFA from UBC, is “interested in the underlying logic of the material world and its forms, working with debris or imagery from a natural environment translated through a process of photographic collage”. Kimble works with themes of existentialism, narcissism, and the strange to examine the absurdities that exist within the everyday; he has a BFA in photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design a degree in acting from Vancouver Film School. Leon uses photography and media art to explore the stories of Splatsin, part of the Secwepemc Nation, where he grew up; he is currently attending UBC Okanagan in the interdisciplinary graduate program researching Secwepemc histories and holds a BFA in photography from Concordia University. Yousefbigloo, who is currently completing her MFA at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts, “investigates sites where aesthetic, spiritual, and collective experiences of transformation can occur within the crevices of the seemingly impenetrable structures of capitalism”.
The 2022 jury includes Emmy Lee Wall, executive director of the Capture Photography Festival; Richard Hill, the Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art at Vancouver Art Gallery; and Samuel Roy-Bois, artist and assistant professor in creative studies at University of British Columbia, Okanagan. The jury shortlisted the seven artists based on the strength of their portfolios, Shier explains, and will convene a second time, after the exhibition is installed, to look at their work in such a setting.
Unlike past years, when the Lind Prize has been awarded at the opening of the exhibition—which this year is on December 15—this year’s winner will be announced at a closing ceremony on the evening of January 26, 2023. (Both events are open to the public.)
“The winner will be decided through consensus, with the work evaluated through a variety of lenses, including the originality of the artists’ approaches, the effectiveness of presentation, clarity of ideas, and what the jury might see as future promise,” Shier says.
Jake Kimble, Grow Up 2, 2022.
The Lind Prize has become one of the foremost awards for emerging artists in B.C., coming at a critical time in their development.
As a commissioning prize, the reward is twofold, Shier explains; the laureate not only receives a cash amount of $10,000, but the award is also meant to support artists in the making new work that The Polygon commits to exhibiting in future. Many of the artists featured in past Lind competitions—not just the winners—have gone on to show extensively across Canada and internationally. Previous winners are Charlotte Zhang (2021), Laura Gildner (2020), Jessica Johnson (2019), Christopher Lacroix (2018), Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes (2017), and Vilhelm Sundin (2016).
“When we launched the Lind Prize we were thinking of the difficult years that many emerging artists face after finishing school, and the challenges of establishing a professional art practice when one might be trying very hard just to make ends meet,” Shier says. “The prize is meant to address, in a small but hopefully significant way, that career moment.
“It’s also important for us to be aware of and engaged with the exciting work that’s emerging in our communities,” Shier adds. “Through the Lind Prize, our curators are able to gain familiarity, if not acquaintance, with the artists who will shape our cultural sector over the decades ahead. To be able to meet them and show their work, at this crucial and formative stage of their career, is a privilege. We see it as a two-way street.”
Simranpreet Anand, हमारे स्वाद की असलियत, insatiable desires of a bourgeoisie, 2021. Photo by Lief Hall
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