Six of Canada’s most compelling contemporary visual artists have been shortlisted for the 2025 Sobey Art Award, Canada’s most established contemporary visual arts prize since 2002. The National Gallery of Canada (NGC) and the Sobey Art Foundation (SAF) unveil their names. They are:
Tarralik Duffy for the Circumpolar region. A multidisciplinary artist and designer from Salliq, Nunavut, Duffy uses various mediums like drawing, photography, sculpture, textiles, printmaking, and salvaged materials to explore contemporary Inuit culture and pop culture.
Tania Willard for the Pacific region. Willard, a mixed Secwépemc and settler artist, uses land-based art to promote Indigenous resurgence through collaborative projects like BUSH Gallery and language revitalization in Secwépemc communities.
Chukwudubem Ukaigwe for the Prairies region. Born in Nigeria, Ukaigwe is an artist, curator, and writer influenced by experimental music, literature, history, and futurism. His work aims to create immersive audiovisual environments, examining subject-object divides and fracturing time and relativity.
Sandra Brewster for the Ontario region. The child of Guyanese parents, Brewster is a Toronto-based Canadian artist. Her practice reflects a multilayered sense of identity, born of a collision between place and time.
Swapnaa Tamhane for the Quebec region. Tamhane’s practice is dedicated to materials such as cotton and jute, leading to the making of handmade paper, archival research, and textile installations. She also collaborates closely with artisans in Gujarat, India, in a skill-sharing process.
Hangama Amiri for the Atlantic region. Amiri works predominantly in textiles, examining notions of home, and how gender, social norms, and geopolitical conflict affect the daily lives of women in Afghanistan and the diaspora. The figurative tendency in her work reflects her interest in the power of representation, especially through everyday objects such as passports, vases, and celebrity postcards.
“On behalf of the Sobey Art Foundation, I extend our warmest congratulations to the six exceptional artists who have been named to this year’s Sobey Art Award shortlist. We are incredibly proud to support their remarkable achievements and look forward to celebrating their ongoing contributions to the Canadian contemporary visual arts landscape in the months ahead,” said Rob Sobey, Chair, Sobey Art Foundation.
“Congratulations to the six outstanding artists shortlisted for the 2025 Sobey Art Award,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director, Curatorial Initiatives, National Gallery of Canada; and Chair, 2025 Sobey Award Jury. “Through paintings, drawings, textiles, video, sculpture and multidisciplinary installations, their works capture the vitality of artmaking in this country today while touching on subjects pertinent to contemporary Canadian identity. We’re excited to work with each of these artists and bring their richly diverse material practices together this fall for the always highly anticipated Sobey Award exhibition.”
A total of $465,000 in prize money will be awarded, including the $100,000 grand prize. Each of the shortlisted artists receives $25,000, and each of the remaining longlisted artists receives $10,000. The winner of the award will be announced at a special celebration on November 8, 2025. An exhibition featuring works by the six shortlisted artists will be held at the Gallery, opening on October 3, 2025, and running until February 8, 2026.
The jury
This year’s independent jury overseeing the longlist selection process and shortlist deliberations is made up of contemporary arts curators and a past winner of the Sobey Art Award, with representation from each of the regions, as well as an international juror. They are: Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (Circumpolar); Zoë Chan (Pacific); Alyssa Fearon (Prairies); Betty Julian (Ontario); Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre (Quebec); Rose Bouthillier (Atlantic); and Carla Acevedo-Yates (international juror).
For more information on the 2025 shortlisted and longlisted artists, click here.
For media inquiries, please contact
Josée-Britanie Mallet, Senior Officer, Media and Public Relations, National Gallery of Canada: bmallet@gallery.ca
Pénélope Carreau, Officer, Public Relations, National Gallery of Canada, pcarreau@gallery.ca
About
Sobey Art Award / The Sobey Art Foundation / National Gallery of Canada
