The Polygon Gallery announces Charlotte Zhang as winner of the 2021 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize
The multimedia artist wins for a short film and libretto called Every Method of Being in the World Looks Wrong But Feels Spectacular
Phil Lind (left) and Charlotte Zhang. Photo by Anita Bonnarens.
Charlotte Zhang has been named the winner of the Polygon Gallery’s 2021 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize.
Zhang, who splits her time between Nanaimo and Los Angeles, is a multimedia artist currently studying film/video at the California Institute of the Arts. She won for her nine-minute short film and libretto Every Method of Being in the World Looks Wrong But Feels Spectacular.
“I am interested in revenge, eros, and the visual economies of subjection,” Zhang said in a statement. “Every Method weaves back and forth between the aftermath of an online romance scam and the ecstatic exploits of a street racer and drifter of mythic proportions; parallel tragedies which are connected through the consequences of naming and ordering, and the ambivalent pleasures of the infinitely modifiable body.”
Established in 2016, the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize is awarded annually to an emerging B.C.-based artist working in mediums of film, photography, or video. Artists are nominated by senior artists, past Lind Prize winners, curators, and staff and faculty from established arts institutions, organizations, and post-secondary programs from across the province.
This year, more than 70 artists were shortlisted.
The winner and honourable mentions were selected 17 seventeen finalists in the Lind Prize 2021 exhibition by a jury consisting of three established curators: Joni Low, Cate Rimmer, and Kristy Trinier. The winner receives $5,000 and a chance to produce a project with the Polygon Gallery. The runners up each receive $1,500.
The runners-up for the 2021 Lind Prize are Emily Carr University of Art + Design MFA graduates Rebecca Bair and Ana Valine and University of Victoria MFA graduate Jordan Hill.
Impressed by the high calibre of all 17 artists, the jurors stated that their selected artworks “engage with images in embodied ways and invite multisensory responses through powerful viewpoints that are urgently needed today: collectivity, interdependent resiliency and intimacy.”
The Lind Prize 2021 exhibition is on view at the Polygon until October 24 and also features work by Mollie Burke, Hannah Campbell, Steven Cottingham, Jacen Dennis, Sai Di, Suzanne Friesen, Levi Glass, Kevin Holliday, Deb Silver, Graeme Wahn, Graham Wiebe, Gloria Wong, and Qiuli Wu. Admission is by donation, courtesy of BMO Financial Group.
For more information, see the Polygon Gallery.
Charlotte Zhang, Every Method of Being in the World Looks Wrong But Feels Spectacular, video still, 2021, courtesy the artist.