You used to be able to spot a future Sobey Art Award winner at 50 paces: If you attended the annual exhibition by the artists shortlisted for the $100,000 prize, there was often an obvious standout, someone whose work was better articulated than that of their peers. In its best years, the prize, for artists under age 40, was predictive of success: Previous winners have included Brian Jungen, David Altmejd, Nadia Myre, Kapwani Kiwanga and Abbas Akhavan, who will represent Canada at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
But this Saturday night, it’s anybody’s guess who might win Canada’s largest visual art prize – or why they might win.
During the hard times of the pandemic, the Sobey award dropped the age requirement, arguing that, since some careers begin later than others, artists of different ages might be considered emerging. Subsequently, it quietly dropped the notion of “emerging” altogether. It is now a prize for artists. What kind of artists? Any kind of artist, to judge from the exhibition currently showing at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, which administers the award for the Sobey Art Foundation.
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The exhibition includes everything from the photography of Sandra Brewster, a well-recognized Toronto professional in her 50s who has shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Power Plant, to recent discoveries such as the quilted tapestries of Hangama Amiri and the bright paintings with media attachments created by Chukwudubem Ukaigwe. Both those artists are in their 30s.
Hopes and impediments (Titled after Achebe) by Chukwudubem UkaigweRachel Topham Photography/Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver
This year’s exhibition is notable for providing more examples of the shortlisted artists’ work than in previous years. Brewster is an artist who often affirms Black presence, and she is represented here by some of her finest achievements. The selection includes Blur, a photo book she created of multiple blurred portraits of Black men and women, and Feeding Trafalgar Square, a large-scale triptych in which she turns an old family photo of her mother feeding pigeons in central London into a monumental figure to rival the heroic monument barely visible behind her. That work was acquired by the AGO in 2021. The showstopper, however, is a piece from her personal collection, three equally large panels featuring photos of Guyanese school girls in a cluster in which one or two turn to look back at the camera. The face of one smaller South Asian girl, her eyes masked by the reflection off her glasses, is particularly arresting.
Sandra Brewster’s Guyana GirlsPolina Teif/courtesy of the artist
Chukwudubem Ukaigwe, a Nigerian artist who immigrated to Manitoba, also makes work about Black presence, but in a cultural sense, in brightly coloured African patterned paintings full of artistic references, those often amplified by media – a recording of jazz music, for example. On the gallery floor, he has installed a large video screen showing a public swimming pool in which one can watch three Black men paddle to and fro (and, amusingly, backward in rewind mode) as though one was standing right over them, intimately observing their fraternity.
A tapestry by Hangama AmiriCourtesy the artist and Cooper Cole, Toronto
Hangama Amiri is an artist of Afghan origin who is gaining recognition for her quilted tapestries narrating elements of Afghan culture and immigrant life. She is represented at the National Gallery by a big selection of these colourful banners, including beauty ads, a table laid with food and an image of school girls in head scarves at recess.
Neither Ukaigwe nor Amiri is living in Canada now, which brings us to another tricky aspect of the Sobey prize: its very Canadian insistence on regional representation, a requirement that can lead to some geographic sleight of hand. Ukaigwe was living in Winnipeg but is now studying at Stanford University in California while Amiri, whose family immigrated to Nova Scotia, graduated from Yale in 2020 and now lives in New Haven, Conn. They are the shortlisted artists representing the Prairies and Atlantic regions, respectively, but their peripatetic careers are typical of successful Canadian visual artists who often relocate to New York, L.A. or Berlin.
Most artists who stay in Canada are clustered in the three largest cities, but not to be deterred by the difficulties of finding equally strong regional candidates, the Sobey Award added the Circumpolar region last year. So far so good. This year’s Circumpolar nominee is Tarralik Duffy, who lives in Saskatoon but returns regularly to Salliq, Nunavut. She is a smart satirist who creates, in leather and paint, reproductions of the packaged goods on which life in the North now depends: There are oversized examples of Klik luncheon meat and a Coke can featuring the brand’s name in Inuktitut. It’s clever stuff playing on the contrasts between Inuit and white culture, but Duffy seems unlikely to win if only because last year’s winner, Nico Williams representing Quebec, addresses similar themes in beadwork.
Ain’t I at the Gate (Titled after Lubrin)?, by Chukwudubem UkaigweRachel Topham Photography/Courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver
What happens to the Circumpolar category, however, when one runs out of Duffys? There are fewer than 150,000 people living in the three Northern territories; there are 16 million in Ontario. One of the arguments for dropping the under-40 requirement was that artists living in isolated places have fewer opportunities to advance their careers. That, of course, is why they do tend to move to bigger places, whether in Canada or abroad.
Brewster represents populous Ontario this year, and for my money, she is the clear winner, also beating out Swapnaa Tamhane from Quebec and Tania Willard from the Pacific region. Tamhane creates sculptural installations using Indian textiles and fine drawings referring to South Asian culture while Willard, better known for her contemporary takes on basketry, offers a mixed installation of sculptural work and prints, including hamburger takeout clamshells made of birchbark and a video featuring a performance of her Surrounded/Surrounding (Woodpile Score), a print that uses the gaps between logs as a musical score. But is this really a fair contest if Brewster is being compared to artists with far less experience or exposure?
Fairness – or more specifically righting past unfairness – is something the Sobey award seems to care about. Another argument for dropping the age restriction was that neither women nor regional artists could launch careers as quickly. Aside from the Circumpolar group, whose five longlisted artists are all Indigenous, seven of the other 26 longlisted artists are Indigenous or have some Indigenous ancestry, while only six men have made a longlist of 31 artists.
The current interest in work made by women is achieving some much needed rebalancing in a deeply sexist art world, but I find it hard to believe that there aren’t more male Canadian artists creating equally prize-worthy work. It’s not like the Sobey award needs to correct its own record: Of 19 previous solo winners, nine were women. (In 2011, two men won together and in 2020, the prize was divided amongst the 25 longlisted finalists.) Female-only prizes have a useful role – think of the Women’s Prize for Fiction – but you wouldn’t want anyone to say that one has to be a woman to get nominated for the Sobey award, one of the richest visual art prizes in the world.
This year’s exhibition features some powerful art that deserves to be celebrated – if only the Sobey Art Award, lost in a thicket of representational issues, could tell us what it was celebrating.
The winner of the 2025 Sobey Art Award will be announced Saturday; the exhibition of the shortlisted artists work continues at the National Gallery of Canada to Feb. 8.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Salliq in Nuvavut, which is known officially as Coral Harbour.