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Edmonton-raised Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter, the multidisciplinary artist known as Kablusiak, is the 2023 Sobey Art Award winner — a prize worth $100,000.
Representing the Prairies and the North region, they were given the nation’s top art prize Saturday night at the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa.
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“It’s life-changing, for sure,” the Yellowknife-born, Calgary-based artist told APTN, talking about their future plans. “I’d love to push the limits and have more fun.”
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This will honestly be something to look forward to as it’s already the enticing wheelhouse of the artist who earned a BFA in Drawing at University of Alberta.
With work deployed with a genuine sense of humour and irony, Kablusiak has long been playfully subverting Inuk art with a wink, including a recent series of Furby and Garfield Ookpiks.
Edmontonians may recall the tidy genius of Kablusiak’s soapstone Listerine bottle or the hilarious wall mural praying to win the Sobey money as a nominee when the Sobey prize award ceremony took place at the Art Gallery of Alberta in 2019. Video artist Stephanie Comilang won that year.
But as happens occasionally, runners-up return to win the nation’s biggest art prize.
“The 2023 Sobey Art Award jury felt compelled by Kablusiak’s fearless and unapologetic practice that confounds old categories and art histories and points to new imaginaries,” said National Gallery of Canada director and chair of the Sobey jury Jonathan Shaughnessy. “Their multidisciplinary vocabulary deploys the experience of being looked at without being seen that shapes Inuit and queer realities in both the art world and society at large.”
Runners-up this year are Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Michèle Pearson Clark, Anahita Norouzi and Séamus Gallagher, each receiving $25,000.
“It’s incredible to know that there’s so many people behind me,” said Kablusiak. “It’s so beautiful.”
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