Duane Linklater: Tautology, 2011-2013, neon, aluminum, enamel, transformer, each 60 by 60 inches, edition of five. Courtesy of the artist and Susan Hobbs Gallery. Photo Steve Farmer.
Omaskêko Cree artist Duane Linklater is this year’s Sobey Art Award winner and will receive about $48,000. The award, created in 2002 by the Stellarton, Nova Scotia-based Sobey Art Foundation, is given to a Canadian artist 40 or under who has exhibited within 18 months of the nomination.
Linklater received his bachelor of Native studies and BFA from the University of Alberta and his MFA in film and video at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY. His most recent exhibitions include a traveling collaborative film project with Brian Jungen called “Modest Livelihood” (2012-13) and a solo exhibition called “Learning” (2013) at Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto.
The curatorial panel that selected Linklater said in a statement that his work “allows for new perspectives within Indigenous cultural production, yet it is Linklater’s broad relevance to contemporary national and international art that is of great value here.”
The four other artists on the shortlist (Mark Clintberg, Pascal Grandmaison, Tamara Henderson and Isabelle Pauwels) will receive about $4,800 each.
