The Lind Biennial
A showcase of new work by the finalists of the Philip B. Lind Prize for Emerging Artists. Established in 2016, this honour is awarded biennially to an emerging BC-based artist working in mediums of photography, film, or video. Artists are nominated for the prize by arts professionals from institutions, organisations, and post-secondary programs across the province. In 2024, thanks to a generous donation from the Lind family, the prize amount has increased to $25,000, making it one of the country’s largest accolades dedicated to supporting visual artists.
This year's exhibiting finalists are: Mena El Shazly, Karice Mitchell, Dion Smith-Dokkie, Parumveer Walia, and Casey Wei. They were selected from a longlist of more than 60 nominees by a panel of esteemed international jurors: Grace Deveney, the Art Institute of Chicago's David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator, Photography and Media; Brian Jungen, acclaimed contemporary artist; and Aram Moshayedi, writer, interim chief curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and current curator-in residence at Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City.
The winner will be announced at an award ceremony on January 23. Previous Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize winners include Charlotte Zhang (2021), Laura Gildner (2020), Jessica Johnson (2019), Christopher Lacroix (2018), Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes (2017), and Vilhelm Sundin (2016).
A Conversation with Juror Grace Deveney and Curator Elliott Ramsey on Saturday, January 25, 2025.
Guided Tours take place every Saturday at 1:30pm
Learn More
Lind Prize winner Casey Wei on CityNews
Polygon Director Reid Shier on CityNews
The Polygon Gallery announces the winner of the 8th Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize
5 artists at The Lind Biennial exhibition at the Polygon Gallery in Stir
About the artists
Mena El Shazly is a visual artist who works with analogue video, embroidery, and performance. Her practice speculates on concepts of presence and transcendence, how these are informed by internet culture and ancient rituals, and how we might cultivate decay to arrive at alternative forms of transformation and regeneration.
Karice Mitchell is a photo-based installation artist who uses found imagery and digital manipulation to engage with the representation of the Black female body in pornography and popular culture. Her work re-contextualizes pre-existing images from Black vintage erotica to reimagine the possibilities for Black womanhood and sexuality detached from the colonial gaze and patriarchy.
Dion Smith-Dokkie is a painter and visual artist who works between multiple media. He is interested in themes of infrastructure, communication, and proximity and distance in relation to land and land use. Water is also a recurring concern in his practice. The works in the exhibition animate these subjects, hearkening to Smith-Dokkie’s experience one summer when he helped conduct traditional land use studies for his nation, West Moberly First Nations.
Parumveer Walia expands photography across video, installation, and other media to examine queerness as subject, aesthetic, and culture. Through researching archives and socio-political episodes, Walia interweaves historical accounts with his lived experiences, hybridising histories, times, and cultures. These are translated into a formal language that might be described as a “Third Space”, embracing contradictions between still/moving, image/object, fiction/history and more.
Casey Wei’s practice negotiates reciprocity, and the give and take necessary to exist meaningfully in the (art) world. Often resulting in collaborative projects – films, bands, concerts, publications – her work creates a history of everyday life as the site of artistic, social, and political transformation.
Banner image: Dion Smith-Dokkie, Map 11d (detail), digital collage, 2023
