Vancouver-based visual artists Laiwan and Hazel Meyer are recipients of this year's VIVA Awards, granted annually in British Columbia by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The foundation also awarded the biennial Alvin Balkind Curator's Prize to Daina Augaitis, chief curator and associate director of the Vancouver Art Gallery from 1996 to 2017.
Established in 1988, the VIVA Awards honour mid-career British Columbia artists, chosen for outstanding accomplishment and commitment by an independent jury.
Laiwan (photo by Nina Skogster)
Laiwan, born in Zimbabwe to Chinese parents, is an interdisciplinary artist, writer and educator whose wide-ranging practice is based in poetics and philosophy. Her socially, culturally and environmentally engaged art investigates de-colonial practices, biodiversity and human impacts on natural ecosystems.
Hazel Meyer (photo by Cait McKinney)
Meyer is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice investigates relationships between sport, sexuality, feminism and material culture. She seeks to recover queer aesthetics, politics and bodies that have often been effaced within histories of infrastructure, athletics and illness.
Daina Augaitis (photo by Rachel Topham Photography(
Augaitis brought greater diversity to contemporary art programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery, expanded the gallery's national and international profile and doubled the size of its permanent collection, as well as carrying out numerous independent projects. She was the gallery's interim director from 2019 to 2020.
Foundation chair Greg Bellerby said the $15,000 awards, announced Tuesday, will be presented online at a date to be announced.
"The VIVA Awards recipients exemplify the strength and quality of the work being done by artists in our community," he said. "Their determination to continue to make engaging and thought-provoking works of visual art are an inspiration to us all."
The VIVA jury members were Lyse Lemieux, Jenn Jackson, Elliott Ramsay, Christian Vistan and Corry Wyngaarden. The Alvin Balkind prize was juried by Zoë Chan, Makiko Hara and Ian Wallace.
For more information, go here.
Source: Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts