$25,000 cash prize awarded to Casey Wei

JAN. 23, 2025 (VANCOUVER, CANADA) — The Polygon Gallery is thrilled to announce Casey Wei as the winner of this year’s Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, the country’s largest accolade for emerging visual artists. The winner was revealed in an awards ceremony this evening at the gallery, with members of the Lind Family in attendance. The recently revamped biennial award comes with a $25,000 prize and the opportunity to produce a project with The Polygon.

“We are appreciative of the contributions made by the five artists included in this year’s Lind Biennial: Mena El Shazly, Karice Mitchell, Dion Smith-Dokkie, Parumveer Walia, and Casey Wei,” writes the jury, which featured esteemed international figures: Grace Deveney from the Art Institute of Chicago, acclaimed contemporary artist Brian Jungen, and the Hammer Museum’s interim chief curator Aram Moshayedi. “Though Wei’s work was selected by the jury as the recipient of the 2025 award, we were equally impressed by the commitment and rigor displayed throughout the exhibition by the other participating artists. Wei’s installation, The Zhang Clan, is a compelling document of diasporic experience, upending the conventions of documentary filmmaking and offering insight into the personal anecdotes that are specific to geographic displacement. The Zhang Clan successfully transposes her DIY aesthetics and community-based art into a gallery setting. This development in her work shows maturity and great promise, as this artist spatially translates her accomplishment in film into exhibition contexts.”

Wei’s interdisciplinary practice in filmmaking, writing, and performance is informed by participatory activities such as editing, publishing, and programming. Recent works include the book Tuning to Oblivion: an artist residency (M:ST Performative Art, 2023), and the album Stimuloso (Mint Records, 2022) with her band, Kamikaze Nurse. Since 2015, she has been programming (and sometimes playing) in her concert series, art rock? which saw its 33rd and 33⅓ iterations in 2023. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. Wei is the Co-founder and Editor of ReIssue magazine, and the Short Forum Programmer at Vancouver International Film Festival.

“My practice is discursive, ephemeral, and social — I seek to engage my peers to build the community in which I want to make work,” says Wei. “The overarching intention behind my projects is to create a history that prioritizes everyday life as the site of transformation — artistically, socially, politically. Materially, it often manifests in projects where I act as director, work with numerous collaborators, and result in various documents to be disseminated thereafter. I often use multimedia and multi-narrative strategies of representation, as much of my work is event-based, collaborative, and iterative. One project can have many components: a book, a performance, a video, a concert — or be shown in different contexts: a single-channel film in a cinema; an installation in a gallery; online for posterity.”

The Lind Prize was established in 2015 with a donation from Rogers Communications in honour of Phil Lind’s 40-year commitment to the communications industry. Lind was a giant in the arts and education community for his many philanthropic endeavours, as well as an avid art collector with a particular love for contemporary photography and BC artists. He passed away on August 20, 2023, his 80th birthday. Last year, the Lind Family ensured the future of the Lind Prize, which is awarded biannually to an emerging BC-based artist working across the mediums of film, photography, or video, with a legacy donation in Phil’s honour. Artists are nominated by staff and faculty from established arts institutions, organizations, and post-secondary programs from across the province. The award is juried by an international panel of artists and curators.

“Our father was a lifelong advocate for contemporary art and we knew that expanding the future of the Lind Prize would be an incredible way to commemorate his legacy,” says Jed Lind, Phil’s son. “The Lind Biennial will ensure that future generations of young artists have an opportunity to show their work in The Polygon’s incredible exhibition space and engage in their rich history.”

Previous Lind Prize winners are: Simranpreet Anand (2023), Charlotte Zhang (2021), Laura Gildner (2020), Jessica Johnson (2019), Christopher Lacroix (2018), Marisa Kriangwiwat Holmes (2017), and Vilhelm Sundin (2016).

The Lind Biennial is on view at The Polygon Gallery until Sunday, Feb. 2. For more information, visit thepolygon.ca/exhibition/the-lind-biennial.

 

Press kit and photos
bit.ly/LindPrize2025

Press contact
Ines Min
604 440 0791
ines@inesmin.com

Banner image: Casey Wei. Photo by Alison Boulier.