Lakota artist and filmmaker Dana Claxton awarded Audain Prize

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Dana Claxton, an internationally celebrated Lakota artist, has been awarded this year’s $100,000 Audain Prize, one particular of the maximum honours inside the Canadian visual arts marketplace, for her human body of do the job.

Ms. Claxton was born in Yorkton, Sask., grew up in Moose Jaw and now life in Vancouver. She is effective in movie, movie, images, and general performance artwork. Her operate, which has created it to prestigious worldwide venues these kinds of as the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork and the Museum of Modern-day Art in New York, is provocative and frequently autobiographical. It seeks to reclaim narratives close to Indigenous society.

Ms. Claxton is also professor and head of the section of art record, visible artwork and concept with the University of British Columbia.

In a video clip proven Monday at a luncheon in Vancouver, where by the B.C.-primarily based prize was declared, Ms. Claxton mentioned her mother taught her how to see persons when she was younger – which she often thinks about when she makes images.

“It comes down to not dehumanizing men and women, and if we believe of the complexities of Canadian heritage, and colonization and criminalizing Indigenous society, there was an component of that dehumanized in my very own family members, so I was curious about individuals realities,” she said in the video clip.

“And so I believe that generating illustrations or photos that are celebratory, but also within a realm of the sociopolitical and the non secular, to elevate individuals up, equally the viewer and the sitter, the topic of the graphic.”

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In an interview with The World and Mail, Ms. Claxton explained her key enthusiasm of creating arts will come from social justice.

“Hopefully that when you are considered as a human staying that men and women will want to handle you with justice. … If you are viewing Indigenous persons as not staying equivalent, or human even, and if we imagine of early social science and people types of points, it’s genuinely about humanizing people, but also in romance to social justice.”

The Audain Prize for Visual Arts, founded in 2004, recognizes the professions of British Columbia’s most distinguished artists. It is one of the most valuable arts prizes in Canada, in the exact same $100,000 enterprise as the annual Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction, the Sobey Artwork Award presented to an rising visible artist, and the Rogers Most effective Canadian Movie Award judged by the Toronto Film Critics Association.

Reid Shier, director of the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, and a member of the prize’s jury, reported the jury spoke of the techniques in which Ms. Claxton’s artwork follow is each expansive and intensively, creatively focused.

“Her will work in movie, online video, images and effectiveness offer you a fully commited and sustained exploration of the historic challenges for Indigenous persons in approaches that are essential, imaginative and propositional. She has also forged a path as a generous mentor and teacher, and throughout her profession, has persistently helped make house for other artists and practitioners,” Mr. Shier wrote in an e-mail.

He noted the jury was unanimous in commending Ms. Claxton for this year’s award.

When it comes to educating and education and learning in arts, Ms. Claxton said she hopes her office can assistance pupils understand how to imagine critically about arts. She also wishes to contribute to decolonizing the classroom, she added.

Michael Audain, the philanthropist and art collector who money the prize through his basis, claimed the purpose of the award is to test to spotlight some of the most illustrious artists in British Columbia.