In 2013, the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize expanded to include the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize Scholarship Program. Each year, this program awarded three $7,000 CAD scholarships to undergraduate students who are entering their final year of study at select Canadian academic institutions. The scholarship is the first major scholarship program administered by a major Canadian art and culture prize. The Scholarships were awarded to students working in photography who have shown extraordinary potential throughout their undergraduate studies. For the purposes of the Scholarship Program, “photography” is defined broadly: submissions can include video, photo-based installation, and other lens-based artwork
For the 2014-15 academic year, our partner institutions were: ACAD University, Ryerson University, Concordia University, Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD), Alberta College of Art and Design (ACAD), Université du Québec, University of Manitoba, University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, University of Lethbridge, University of Saskatchewan, York University, University of Guelph, and University of Ottawa.
More than 100 students applied to the program, and each academic partner institution formed a jury of three faculty to review their students' submissions and select one finalist for submission to the 2014-15 Scholarship Program Jury.
The three winners received $7000 CAD and received a trip alongside a faculty member to Toronto to attend the 2015 Aimia | AGO Photography Prize Winner Announcement Gala and meet the artists shortlisted for the Prize. Additionally, the home institutions of the winning students each received $1000 CAD honoraria.
WINNERS
We were very pleased with the outstanding overall quality of all of the nominated artists. Each of the three winners takes on the conventions of various photographic approaches: Alison Postmas’ masterfully executed compositions investigate the uncanny dimensions of domestic spaces; Lodoe Laura’s diverse body of work explores personal identity through performative gestures and a tactile engagement with the medium; Graham Weibe’s confrontational yet poetic snapshots reference documentary traditions and reveal a compassionate engagement with his subjects. We congratulate them all.
- Gabrielle Moser, Lisa Oppenheim, Adelina Vlas
Lodoe Laura
Ryerson University
Lodoe Laura, born in Ottawa, Canada in 1991, is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from The School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. A person of mixed race, her work deals with themes of ancestry, legacy and tradition, which relate to the broader motif of identity. Her artistic practice is a response to personal realities, honoring and adapting existing practices and material. Lodoe Laura’s work questions the act of photography as a supplement for memory and permanency its use in the attempt of preserving the self. Her images have been exhibited and published internationally, and are held in private collections in Ottawa, Canada; London, UK; and in LA and NYC, USA. Lodoe Laura’s first photo book, Stateless, which attempts to tackle the notion of identity of the stateless Tibetans in Northern India, was recently acquired by the Ryerson University Archives and Special Collections.
Lodoe Laura, From my Father’s Home, from the series Colonized / Colonizer, 2015, C-Print
Alison Postma
University of Guelph
Alison Postma was born and raised in the Greater Toronto Area and is currently working towards her undergraduate degree in Studio Art at the University of Guelph. Her work uses photographs and their cultural significance as a poetic tool to create images and experiences of intangible feelings, ideas, and non-spaces. Her artistic practice centres on ideas of dreams and the experiences of spaces, places, and people within them. Common themes that arise in her work are those of alienation, duality, and ideas of non-spaces. She makes use of non-traditional installations and surface manipulation to further her conceptual intent.
Alison Postma, Untitled, from the series Untitled (Alison), 2014, Inkjet print
Graham Wiebe
University of Manitoba
Graham Wiebe, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1994, is currently working on his B.F.A. (Hons) Degree at the University of Manitoba. His artistic practice challenges the idea of the snapshot and its ability to capture a moment of artistic seduction. His hometown of Winnipeg provides an endless curiosity of public and private instances of nostalgia. Heavily influenced by youth subcultures, his photographic work allows a combination of impulse and irony to entice a narrative.
Graham Wiebe, Preteen Smoker (ADHD), 2014, Photograph
FINALISTS
Nedda Baba
York University
Nedda Baba, born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1993, is currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Visual Art at York University. She has participated in several group exhibitions and collaborative projects in Toronto. In 2014, she was nominated as a finalist for The State Hermitage Museum Young Artists Program. Her work explores the constructed notions of an Assyrian (Iraqi Christian) identity in diaspora as it relates to femininity, family, religion, and politics. Inspired by the practice of cultural preservation, she questions the nature of the customs and traditions that her family has strived to maintain, while also exploring ideas associated with loss and memory in migration itself. Baba’s multifaceted view on these topics is shaped by the subjectivities that stem from her Eastern origins combined with her upbringing in the West. Her practice vacillates between staged studio pieces using mementos from her childhood and constructed images using vernacular photographs from her family archive.
Nedda Baba, 1/12, from the series Home, 2015, 11" x 14", Inkjet
Sabrina Chamberland
University of Ottawa
Sabrina Chamberland, born and raised in the Ottawa-Gatineau region, is currently completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography at the University of Ottawa. Chamberland’s works investigate the precarious and visceral qualities of the human body to further explore the conflicting dichotomies that become inherent when put upon close examination, such as the body’s capacity to attract and repulse, to comfort and estrange, to enlighten and disorient. Through fragmented studies of the flesh and atypical visual juxtapositions, Chamberland’s photographs further aim to question the body’s relationship to notions of gender, identity, technology, and ultimately, the human condition. Her recent works have been included in local exhibitions, notably a permanent installation at University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Social Sciences and two solo shows at Gallery 115 and Studio Sixty Six in Ottawa. Chamberland’s works have also been featured in the 2014 Figureworks Annual Award Show for which she won first prize.
Sabrina Chamberland, Test 1 v2, 2014, 35” x 42”, Archival inkjet print
Emily Kohlert
University of Saskatchewan
Emily M. Kohlert is a 21-year-old artist currently completing her Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, SK. She specializes in photography and printmaking. She began shooting film photography seven years ago, hired often to take promotional and live photos of bands, as well as shooting for hobby. Mainly, she photographs with film and is well-versed in 35mm, medium and large format, and darkroom editing and printing. Now, fine art photography, graphic design, and screen print are the areas she focuses on. The concepts she brings to life with her fine art photography are self reflective, illustrative, and overflowing with emotion. After discovering the digital medium, poster and album art design have become a focus as well. She started a graphic design business one year ago by the name of Dandy Lion, and her design work is based in photography, having explored photo merging.
Emily M. Kohlert, Sudden Dark Truths, 2014, 20" x 16”, Archival pigment print of photographed negative
Louis-Alex Lavoie
l’Université du Québec à Montréal
Louis-Alex Lavoie is a performance artist, dancer, artist and writer from Montreal who’s currently completing a degree in visual and media arts at l’Université du Québec à Montréal. Between reality and fiction, his artistic practice explores the construction of an identity related to the context and the scene suggested in his photographs. By using personal experiences and exposing them to the public eye without revealing too much, he tries to question his own background experiences through the ignorance of his models. He focuses on the individual stories of each photographic portrait, which try to convey the existence of its subject. The perspective created by taking a picture intensifies the importance of every detail by seeing it from a alternate point of view. The result of said process refers to past events, which place the audience face to face with its memories.
Louis-Alex Lavoie, Trouver une manière de dire qu'on a aimé ça, mais qu'on recommencerais pas une deuxième fois, 2015, 30" x 40", Photographie argentique couleur
Shuo Li
Alberta College of Art and Design
Shuo Li is a Chinese Canadian photographer based in Calgary, Alberta. His work has been presented in China and Canada at public and private institutions including the Calgary Public Library and the Main Mall Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design. He works primarily with medium and large format cameras using traditional printing techniques and he occasionally post processes his work digitally. He has been a recipient of a number of scholarships and awards. His work explores the landscape and our emotional relationship to it from a bi-cultural perspective. He sees the landscape as a metaphor for human yearning and inner dreams.
Shuo Li, Wander & Wonder, 2013, 24" x 24", Inkjet print on cotton rag
Mara Gajic
OCAD University
Mara Gajic is currently a student at OCAD University pursuing a BFA in photography. Her work is driven by elements of performance and costume to explore open narratives of self-construct and personal psychology and the quiet space between imagination and reality. Often using herself to stage her images, she imposes new realities on both herself and her photographs through the embodiment of a performative role to communicate underlying personal states in the form of colourful visual narratives and to initiate an unspoken dialogue between the viewer and artist, which is mediated through the photograph. In spring 2014, Mara was the recipient of the Emerging Artists and Designers Scholarship. In February 2015, she took part in Here, her first group exhibition at Autumn Gallery in Toronto alongside nine photography students from OCAD. Some of her most recent work has been selected to be in the Art with Heart Auction in fall 2015.
Mara Gajic, Room Series
Faber Neifer
Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Faber Neifer is a photographer currently earning his BFA in Photography with a minor in Social Practices and Community Engagement at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Primarily working through photography, his practice also includes installations, film, and audio works. Born and raised in British Columbia, his work engages with the land and the city through his camera, documenting and exploring notions of settlement, dwellings, and homes. As a European-Chinese resident of Vancouver, his work is created with an awareness of this city’s particular history of colonialism, settlement, and marginalization. His work has been exhibited in group and solo shows. He is the recipient of the 2014 John Jordan Memorial Scholarship and Friends of Emily Carr Scholarship.
Faber Neifer, Vancouver House, Archival Inkjet Print
Roxanne Ross
Concordia University
Roxanne Ross was born in Montreal and is currently completing a BFA in photography at Concordia University. Her practice consists of large format photographs which focus on relationships within the contemporary North American family. Her portraits attempt to understand the relationships that comprise the modern family having now evolved from its original nuclear framework. Her interest lies in questioning what the contemporary structure has given way to, as well as in how those relationships (or lack thereof) have changed us. Through her images, she attempts to ask what and where is the North American family. She has participated in several group shows in Montreal, including exhibitions at ARTS NDG and Art Mûr. She was included in the long list for the BMO 1st Art Competition in Toronto. For her latest project, she received the Fine Arts Student Alliance, Special Project Grant, Fall 2014. She was featured in The Concordia Undergraduate Journal of Art History’s most recent volume. Her work is held in private collections in Canada and the Unites States.
Roxanne Ross, Lily, 2013, 30” x 40”
Daniel Schrempf
University of Lethbridge
Daniel Schrempf was born in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1993 and moved to Lethbridge, Alberta in 2006. He has recently completed his third year in the BFA New Media program at the University of Lethbridge. While initially wanting to become an Architect, his focus shifted towards photography early on in his undergraduate studies. Following a two-week solo trip along the American west coast, his series 123°w appeared in a local exhibit ArtWalk, an event created by the Allied Arts Council of Lethbridge. Among other projects, he has recently finished a documentary work on Northern Poland consisting of 20 analog silver prints and 20 digital inkjet prints that comment on the variance of time periods that are represented within the country. His work explores his fascination with the highly involved practices of analog photography, how a digital medium can be returned to a similar complicated process, and how this purism magnifies and expresses the beauty of the human engine in the resulting images.
Daniel Schrempf, Clubhouse, 2014, Digital negative
Lauren Tsuyuki
Simon Fraser University
Lauren Tsuyuki, born in 1994, is currently a student at Simon Fraser University who is completing her BFA in visual arts. Most recently, Tsuyuki, in collaboration with her classmates, helped curate The Geometry of Knowledge: Part 4 You Are Here exhibition at SFU’s Audain Gallery. She has experimented with a variety of mediums and techniques but paper-folding has always been recurrent in her work. In the last year she has been focusing on the transformative nature of folding. Her work often deals with hybrid forms that are a result of combining the traditional art of paper-folding with modern images or forms.
Lauren Tsuyuki, Untitled 11, 2014, 8” x 10.2”, appropriated images from LOVE magazine
D'arcy Way
NSCAD University
D’Arcy Way, born in Toronto and currently living in Halifax while completing his BFA at NSCAD University, focuses on the idea that the all matter and energy in the universe tends to evolve towards a state of uniformity. Combining the philosophies of photography, scientific evidence, natural processes and social economic problems, often with a technical hands-on approach. Through photographic landscapes he has questioned our perception of the world, the wonder of deep time, and various ever-changing forms of water with the interaction between states. Way continuously looks to push the use of photographic apparatuses to create new ways of viewing our environment. His most recent work explores photographs as objects while creating the illusion of three-dimensional space. Presenting the compressed flat plane of photography as transparent sculptural installations. His works impose the questioning of our interaction with technology and that our perspectives can be constantly changed.
D’Arcy Way, Isolation in Progress, 2015, 8" x 10" x 1.5", photography and sculpture
Chadman Wong
University of British Columbia
Chadman Wong is currently completing his BFA in Visual Arts and Art History at the University of British Columbia. His work is primarily concerned with trying to establish a relationship between cultural identity and artistic identity through referring to his own personal life while alluding to aspects of art history. In his third year of University, he was a part of Kinetica, the first student group-show held in the new Art History and Visual Arts (AHVA) Gallery. More recently, Wong’s essay: Monet: The Ephemeral and Ruskin’s “Truth to Nature” was published in the Undergraduate Journal of Art History. Utilizing both photography and video, Wong attempts to make sense of both the immigrant experience, as one that is linked to personal history, and the preservation of cultural traditions. He also wishes to express the struggles of being a child of an immigrant family, who is trying to form their own identity.
Chadman Wong, Body In Landscape In Body, 2014, 2’ 4” x 1’ 6”, Photograph
JURORS
Adelina Vlas
Adelina Vlas is the associate curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Previously, she has worked at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Canada where she concentrated on permanent collection displays and special exhibitions. Over the last decade, she has organized exhibitions with younger-generation artists including Carlos Amorales, Mohamed Bourouissa, Martha Colburn, Manon de Boer, Tim Hyde, Joshua Mosley and Fiona Tan. While at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Vlas curated the critically acclaimed exhibition Michael Snow: Photo-Centric. She has a master’s degree in Art History and a curatorial diploma in Visual Culture from York University, as well as a master of arts in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London.
Gabrielle Moser
Gabrielle Moser is a writer, educator and independent curator based in Toronto. She regularly contributes to Artforum.com, and her writing has appeared in venues including Art in America, ARTnews, Fillip, Photography & Culture and the Journal of Visual Culture. She has curated exhibitions for Access Gallery, Gallery TPW, Xpace and Vtape. She holds a PhD in art history and visual culture from York University and teaches the history and theory of photography at OCAD University.
Lisa Oppenheim
Lisa Oppenheim was born in 1975 in New York City, where she lives and works. Oppenheim’s photographs and videos, including those that are a part of the Aimia | AGO Photography Prize 2014 Exhibition, are composed of images and materials from the recent and not-so-recent past that she re-processes and transforms through various historical and contemporary techniques. Her process often begins online, where she sources images and objects that she reinterprets photographically using both analogue and digital technologies. Through this approach, the process itself becomes source material, as Oppenheim gives photographic images new forms and new contexts. Recent solo exhibitions include Forever is Composed of Nows, Kunsterverin in Hamburg; From Abigail to Jacob (Works 2004-2014), Kunstverein in Graz; and Heaven Blazing into the Head, The Approach Gallery, London. Oppenheim graduated with an MFA from The Milton Avery Graduate School for the Arts at Bard College in 2002.
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