For immediate release
Tuesday, September 28, 2021

The Polygon Gallery is pleased to announce that Nanaimo/Los Angeles-based Charlotte Zhang is the winner of the 2021 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize. The award was announced at a ceremony on Tuesday, September 28. Zhang (b. 1999), a multimedia artist currently studying film/video at the California Institute of the Arts, won for her 9-minute short film and libretto Every Method of Being in the World Looks Wrong But Feels Spectacular.

“I am interested in revenge, eros, and the visual economies of subjection,” says Zhang in a statement. “Every Method weaves back and forth between the aftermath of an online romance scam and the ecstatic exploits of a street racer and drifter of mythic proportions; parallel tragedies which are connected through the consequences of naming and ordering, and the ambivalent pleasures of the infinitely modifiable body.”

The runners-up for the Lind Prize are Emily Carr University of Art and Design MFA graduates Rebecca Bair and Ana Valine, and University of Victoria MFA graduate Jordan Hill.

The winner and honourable mentions were selected from seventeen finalists in The Lind Prize 2021 exhibition by a jury consisting of three established curators: Joni Low, Cate Rimmer, and Kristy Trinier. The winner receives $5,000 and a chance to produce a project with The Polygon Gallery. The runners up each receive $1,500.

Impressed by the high calibre of all 17 artists, the jurors stated that their selected artworks “engage with images in embodied ways and invite multisensory responses through powerful viewpoints that are urgently needed today: collectivity, interdependent resiliency and intimacy.”

Established in 2016, the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize is awarded annually to an emerging BC-based artist working in mediums of film, photography, or video. Artists are nominated for the prize by staff and faculty from established arts institutions, organisations, and post-secondary programs from across the province. This year over 70 artists were shortlisted. Artists are nominated by a range of nominators across the province including curators, senior artists, post-secondary faculty, and past Lind Prize winners.

The Lind Prize 2021 is on view at The Polygon until October 24, and also features work by Mollie Burke, Hannah Campbell, Steven Cottingham, Jacen Dennis, Sai Di, Suzanne Friesen, Levi Glass, Kevin Holliday, Deb Silver, Graeme Wahn, Graham Wiebe, Gloria Wong, and Qiuli Wu.

Image: Phil Lind and Charlotte Zhang by Anita Bonnarens.

Presenting Sponsor

This exhibition is part of The Polygon Gallery’s
Emerging Artist Mentorship Program, generously supported by

Banner Image: Charlotte Zhang, Every Method, video still, 2021, courtesy the artist.

 

Press Images
Download Here