CONGRATULATIONS TO URSULA JOHNSON! The Sobey Award Short List is Announced

This year’s Sobey Award short list is dominated by female artists including my client Ursula Johnson.

From the CBC:

Johnson, who is of Mi’kmaw First Nation ancestry, specializes in performance and installation art. She incorporates her heritage into her art, which has included basket weaving. She was the first female Mi’kmaw student to graduate from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design.

Johnson has previously been longlisted for the Sobey, but a win for her would be significant: no artist from the Atlantic region has yet been awarded the prize.

Ursula applies an amazing amount of rigour to her practice which includes performances involving traditional Mi’kmaq basket weaving with strips of ash (both black and white species). She pounds the wood to make the strips from which she weaves baskets and other forms.

Through the medium of durational performance art she enters into laborious tasks/circumstances that create repetitive strain on her body and mind while creating tension with the viewer.

Read more about Ursula and her work at www.ursulajohnson.ca.

Above image by Leah Snyder for www.mixedbagmag.com.