The MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award: RBC promotes five emerging artists

This article originally appeared on News & Stories.

The RBC Emerging Artists program has supported organizations offering career advancement opportunities in visual arts, music, theatre, dance, literature and film since 2007.

Since 2015, over 35,000 artists have been supported by RBC, 59% of which are women.

A unique accolade in Canada

The Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, in collaboration with the RBC Foundation, has been awarding the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award every two years since 2015. This unique accolade combines an exhibition, a publication and acquisitions, fostering the professional development of artists who have been practicing for 10 to 20 years.

Thanks to RBC’s generous contribution, the works of four Quebec artists — Diane Morin (2015), Carl Trahan (2017), Numa Amun (2019) and Stanley Février (2021) — have garnered exceptional recognition.

“The efforts of the Musée and its Foundation are invaluable in providing much-needed opportunities for various emerging artists to gain recognition and exposure to new audiences,” says Nicolas Audet-Renoux, Regional Vice-President, Quebec, Beauce, Quebec Central and Mauricie at RBC Royal Bank.

New this year

This year, for the first time, the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award honours not one, but five outstanding artists. Their works are featured in a special exhibition running from October 26, 2023, to January 7, 2024, with the support of RBC, a valued partner since 2013.

The five award recipients benefit from a $10,000 grant, business skills development, mentoring, access to a wide network, opportunities to present their art to new audiences, and the chance to establish a solid connection with one of Quebec’s most renowned museums.

Maria Ezcurra, Anahita Norouzi, Celia Perrin Sidarous, Ève Tagny and Sara A. Tremblay, from diverse backgrounds, were chosen by a panel for the excellence and relevance of their creations. Blending the poetic and the political, the exhibition tackles pressing issues through a variety of media (installation, sculpture, photograph and video), including migration, nature and the garden, memory and identity, and expressions of resilience. A brief portrait of the five artists follows.

Maria Ezcurra

Maria Ezcurra embraces an ecofeminist perspective to reflect on clothing and the social construction of gender, as well as questions of identity and immigration. The artist’s creations feature textiles, shoes and other personal objects, which she transforms in order to explore their subjective dimension and cultural significance.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

One of the biggest challenges Maria says she faced when trying to gain a foothold in the Canadian art industry was invisibility. She has had to start from scratch here, while in her native Mexico, she had an established career. Maria is not only an artist, but also a mother, teacher and art mediator. “You need to stretch in numerous directions, without breaking, like the socks and textiles I showcase in the exhibition! But I also found a great community of supportive people, which made the process more manageable and beautiful,” explains Maria.

For the Montreal artist, the greatest benefit of the prize presented by RBC is the visibility it gives to artists, particularly through its reputation and the exhibition at the MNBAQ.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

Anahita Norouzi

Anahita Norouzi is an Iranian-Canadian artist based in Quebec since 2018.

“After completing a Masters of Fine Arts at Concordia University, I returned to Iran briefly, then decided to come back to Montreal for good in 2018,” says Anahita.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

Anahita’s work explores notions of displacement, memory and identity from a psycho-historical perspective. Eager to highlight the effects of colonialism on the contemporary world, she unearths forgotten narratives, focusing in particular on botanical heritage and archaeological excavations. Interweaving past and present, here and elsewhere, individual and collective, her works question the links between culture and politics in an era of globalization.

Anahita shares that RBC’s $10,000 grant helped her cover part of the production costs of the exhibition presented as part of this award at the MNBAQ.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

Celia Perrin Sidarous

Celia Perrin Sidarous creates powerfully poetic image sequences and photographic assemblages by transforming items from her extensive collection of personal objects via the camera’s lens, as well as imbuing found images with new semantic significance.

Her stagings echo the historical genre of still life, blurring the usual conditions of vision and interpretation. The artist also makes experimental short films, an extension of her photographic practice that she describes as temporal collages.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

“I studied cinema before I studied photography, and I’ve always been fascinated by the image, its malleability and its ability to translate stories in a non-linear way,” explains Celia.

The Montreal-based artist says the grant will be used in part to support the development of innovative projects currently underway. It is also a welcome recognition of her work.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

Ève Tagny

Ève Tagny explores the role of rituals, gestures of nurture and resistance as a means of countering the violence that characterizes human relationships. Her practice centres around garden and landscape spaces, which she views as sites imbued with memory and identity.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

The exhibition features two sites, one of which is in London. Ève brings together these two sites, which are located in cities close to her heart, to highlight issues of land appropriation, possession, valuation, disruption, construction and profit.

“The Montreal site is close to where I grew up and is undergoing a rapid transformation, so it was of special interest to me for its transient aspect, presumably on its way to a certain gentrification,” says Ève.

The $10,000 was used to produce the exhibition and will help cover the cost of renting her artist’s studio for the coming year.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

Sara A. Tremblay

Sara A. Tremblay captures images that shift between the ordinary and extraordinary aspects of life in the Eastern Townships countryside.

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

“I have always loved creative endeavours that are outside my usual routine: artistic residencies, travel, special contexts (my 650 km hike in Gaspésie, for instance),” says Sara.

The challenge involved in mixing everyday life and the life of an artist is what led to the Tout t’empêche series and the Il faut travailler fort pour se reposer video.

Sara spent some three years documenting the movements of life in the place where she lives. Both photographic and sculptural, the result reflects the dichotomy between the picturesque beauty of life and its harshness, affecting it as well, despite the daily enchantment.

The artist says that her nomination for the Contemporary Art Award motivates her to pursue her projects: “I think I’ve reached a new plateau with this nomination, and it strongly encourages me to focus on my projects. I am more hopeful for the future!”

Photo credit: Louis Hébert & Denis Legendre, MNBAQ

The public is invited to vote

For the first time, the public will be invited to vote for their favourite exhibition. The distinction will be revealed in December, at the same time as the winner of the 2023 edition of the MNBAQ Contemporary Art Award, selected by a panel of experts. The winning artist’s work will be featured in a monograph in 2024 and acquired for the MNBAQ’s collections.

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