Publication_Information
ohpinamake 2024/25
March 11, 2025 - March 14, 2025
The third ohpinamake Indigenous Art award. ohpinamake is an award for Indigenous artists whose territories intersect with the current colonial borders of Canada. The artist chosen must clearly engage in a practice that ‘lifts others’. This winter, our jury of esteemed artists and cultural workers, Tarah Hogue, Felicia Gay, and last year’s recipient, Joi Arcand, confirmed the shortlisted artists for ohpinamake. Congratulations to: Public presentations on their practices will take place at the Kenderdine Art Gallery’s Rounding space in the context of USask’s Indigenous Achievement Week (March 10th - 14th, 2025).
Priscilla Boulay | Brody Burns | Vanessa Hyggen | Natesa Medlicott-Kappo | Audie Murray
2024/2025 Shortlist
On Tuesday, March 11th, at 12:30 PM, join us for a panel-style presentation, followed by a Q&A session with the following shortlisted artists: Priscilla Boulay, Brody Burns, and Natesa Medliocott-Kappo.
The event will be in-person, and available online via livestream here.
Born into a family of multi-generational carvers in Tuktuuyaqtuuq (Tuktoyaktuk), Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, Priscilla Boulay is a sculptor who works with stone, ivory, antler and horn, which she uses to depict Inuvialuit traditions and activities out on the land. She has garnered a social media following by posting behind-the-scenes insights into her artistic process, allowing art enthusiasts to view her works in progress.
Boulay was surrounded by carving from a young age: she is the granddaughter of renowned sculptor Bobby Taylor Pokiak, who passed his skills to his children, including Maryanne Taylor-Reid, Boulay’s mother. At age three, Boulay was handed her first piece of soapstone by her uncle Derrald Taylor, and began her instruction in the Taylor carving tradition by polishing it. She has been pursuing sculpture full-time since moving to Alberta in 2010.
Brody Burns is a Cree artist from James Smith Treaty 6 Territory currently residing in Saskatoon. Brody completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the University of Saskatchewan in September 2023, showcasing upwards of 30 pieces in his graduating exhibition, “No Words Necessary.”
Brody’s work explores the visualization of spirit and energy using abstract paintings done in acrylic, oil, and augmented reality. Digital media has allowed Brody to go beyond paintings to reimagine concepts such as Traditional Knowledge while representing a combined perspective of Spirit and Science through abstract forms and color. Brody has received a number of awards from the University of Saskatchewan including the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant, the Graduate Teaching Fellowship, the Ohpinamake Award, as well as the Graduate Scholarship Award. In addition to his MFA, Brody holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Saskatchewan.
Vanessa Hyggen is a Woodland Cree and Norwegian painter and bead artist from nemepith sipihk (Sucker River), Northern Saskatchewan. A member of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, Hyggen resides in Saskatoon, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts with Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan. Her work—spanning painting, beadwork, and public art projects—draws upon themes of memory, tradition, and the natural world.
Holding her community as her family and support, Natesa Medlicott-Kappo grew up in Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 8 Territory, Alberta. Her grandmother, Mary Kappo, worked with the band and child welfare to protect Indigenous children from being taken during the 60’s scoop and afterwards. With many members of her family involved in activism to advance the rights and equity for Indigenous people, this has strongly influenced Natesa as a person and as an artist.
Natesa's work focuses strongly on the many issues that Indigenous people in contemporary Canada face on a daily basis, and she considers her work strongly intersectional and feminist. Based in her own lived experiences, and the lived experiences of others, Natesa researches her work both academically and through oral traditions with elders and peers, believing that the importance of ethical interviews and listening to the stories of those who have struggled cannot be overstated. Having been greatly affected by intergenerational trauma, impacting the way she was raised - although lucky that her family was able to remain connected to the more-than-human world and Nehiyaw culture - not everyone was able to be taught these connections and knowledge. Natesa hopes to create work that connects the contemporary realities of being an Indigenous woman in Canada with the cultural safe haven and traditional ways of knowing through the lens of Indigenous feminism.
2024/2025 Award Winner
We are excited to announce Audie Murray as the third recipient of the ohpinamake award!
On Friday, March 14th, at 4 PM, at the Kenderdine Art Gallery's Rounding space, Audie will offer a presentation on how their work lifts others, and what this award means to them. Following the presentation, we welcome everyone to celebrate the recipient, those shortlisted, and the spirit of ohpinamake.
Recipient’s Presentation: Friday, March 14th at 4:00 PM
ohpinamake award ceremony: Friday, March 14th at 5:00 PM
The event will be in-person, and available online via livestream here.
Audie Murray is a multi-disciplinary Métis artist from Saskatchewan currently based in Regina. Working with themes of contemporary Indigenous culture and ideas of duality and connectivity, Murray draws on time honoured techniques and contemporary concepts to inform her material choices. She often uses found objects from daily life in her work.
Murray completed a Diploma in Visual Arts at Camosun College in 2016, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Regina in 2017. In 2018 she attended the Plug In ICA: Bush Gallery Summer Institute in Winnipeg. In the summer of 2017 she studied traditional tattoo practices with the Earth Line Tattoo Collective and continues to work with hand poke and skin stitching methods. Her BFA graduating work, Pair of Socks was selected as the Saskatchewan winner of the 2017 BMO 1st Art! Prize, and in 2018 she was the recipient of the William and Meredith Saunderson Prize through the Hnatyshyn Foundation. In 2019, she won the Juror's Award at the Salt Spring National Art Prize for her photograph for hambone, metis billy stick.
Murray's work was featured in Li Salay, a major survey of Métis art at the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton (2018) curated by Amy Malbeuf and Jessie Ray Short. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions at the Anchorage Museum, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Open Space the fifty fifty arts collective, Victoria; Gam Gallery, Vancouver; the Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina; the Clay and Glass Gallery, Waterloo; Hamilton Artist Inc; and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto. The Nanaimo Art Gallery presented Murray's solo exhibition, Pawatamihk, from October 22, 2021 to January 9, 2022. Most recently, her work has been featured in Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, a large-scale exhibition curated by Candice Hopkins on view from June 24 - November 26, 2023 at the Hessel Museum of Art.ohpinamake is an award for Indigenous artists whose territories intersect with the current colonial borders of Canada. The artist chosen must clearly engage in a practice that ‘lifts others’.
The award is made possible through the partnership of Jim Knock (BE ‘76) and Marian Knock with the University of Saskatchewan. This partnership was established with the express purpose of creating an award that acknowledges the unique capacity of art to bridge differences, but also to make things different. Please join Jim and Marian, following their exemplary leadership, to make this bold vision a reality by contributing to the fund here. We will continue to develop both the processes of application, adjudication, and the possible outcomes of ohpinamake over the next two years.
Joi T. Arcand
Joi T. Arcand is an artist from Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 Territory, currently residing in Ottawa, Ontario. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with Great Distinction from the University of Saskatchewan in 2006. In 2018, Arcand was shortlisted for the prestigious Sobey Art Award. Her practice includes installation, photography and design and is characterized by a visionary and subversive reclamation and indigenization of public spaces through the use of Cree language and syllabics. Recent solo exhibitions include Central Art Garage (Ottawa, ON); College Art Galleries (Saskatoon, SK); ODD Gallery (Dawson City, Yukon); Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon); Wanuskewin Heritage Park (Saskatoon); Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina). Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Àbadakone at the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON) and INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Arcand has been artist-in-residence at Wanuskewin Heritage Park (Saskatoon); OCAD University (Toronto); Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art (Winnipeg); the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity; and Klondike Institute of Art and Culture (Dawson City, Yukon); and Harbourfront Centre (Toronto).
Felicia Gay
Felicia Gay is of Swampy Cree and Scottish (Gordon Clan) heritage and brings a thoughtful lens of Indigenous worldviews and counter-narratives to contemporary curation. She was the founding Artistic Director of Red Shift Gallery in Saskatoon (alongside co-founder Joi Arcand) and was most recently the Curator at Wanuskewin Galleries. Her unique perspective was shaped by her early years living with her grandparents in Cumberland House in northern Saskatchewan, combined with her time in Saskatoon with her mother. This background has given her the ability to engage with works by a broad range of Indigenous artists with a crucial sensitivity.
Tarah Hogue
Raised in central Alberta, Hogue is of Métis and white settler ancestry and is a citizen of the Métis Nation of Alberta, with relatives from the Red River communities of St. Charles and St. François Xavier in Manitoba. Tarah Hogue is a curator, writer, and cultural worker based in Treaty 6 and 7 territories and the Métis homeland. In 2020, she became Remai Modern’s inaugural Curator (Indigenous Art) and recently transitioned to Adjunct Curator. Previously, she held curatorial fellowships at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, served as a visiting curator at the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, and was curator-in-residence at grunt gallery in Vancouver. Her recent curatorial projects include the touring exhibition Meryl McMaster: Bloodline (2023), co-curated with Sarah Milroy, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Storied Objects: Métis Art in Relation (2022), with advisor Sherry Farrell Racette, which received an AAMC Award for Excellence, and the mid-career survey and monograph Adrian Stimson: Maanipokaa’iini (2021). In 2019, Hogue received the Hnatyshyn Foundation-TD Bank Group Award for Emerging Curator of Contemporary Canadian Art.
