Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts Exhibition Opening Reception
Video Still of Jin-me Yoon, Time Freed (Beyond Capture), 2025, Single channel video, 4K, 1.85, Stereo,12:39 min loop
About
The MacKenzie Art Gallery is hosting the 2025 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts exhibition. Join us in celebrating the cultural contributions of the award winners and featuring remarks by the National Gallery of Canada, Canada Council of the Arts, and artists Bruce LaBruce, Daina Augaitis, Sandra Rodriguez, Thaddeus Holownia, and Jin-me Yoon. An exhibition viewing and reception will follow.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
The MacKenzie Art Gallery is proud to be the inaugural host for a new format of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts Exhibition. Each year, a new institution across Canada will host an exhibition of work by the recipients of this prestigious award, starting here in Regina for 2025.
The exhibition will feature the work of eight artists and curators who have helped to shape the Canadian art landscape over the course of their exceptional careers and will include artworks and curatorial projects by each of the 2025 winners intended to highlight key elements of each laureate’s creative practice.
Artists like Clive Robertson and Bruce LaBruce have expanded beyond the bounds of the visual arts world. Robertson has had a profound impact on artist-centred publishing, while LaBruce has left an indelible mark on contemporary Queer film in Canada and Europe. Daina Augaitis, the sole curator recognized this year, is known for scholarship and mentorship enacted through sustained engagement with artists. Artists Kent Monkman and Jin-me Yoon are both admired for their now iconic works featuring variations on their own likenesses. Both Yoon and Monkman question the bond between place and identity with humour and historical context. Thaddeus Holownia and Peter Pierobon, working at either side of the country, both respond to their natural surroundings. Pierobon often works with natural materials found in British Columbia, while Holownia traces the built environment and avian life near his home in New Brunswick. Sandra Rodriguez’s practice has been path-breaking in the world of digital art, bringing creative digital innovations within Canada to international attention. Rodriguez has embraced and imbued new technologies with her own creative force.
By looking back at the long trajectory of the award winners’ careers, we celebrate the dedication that each winner’s practice represents and look ahead to where their work may take them next.
Jaime Black-Morsette
Jaime Black-Morsette is a Red River Métis artist, writer and activist, currently living and working on their home territory near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
Black-Morsette’s interdisciplinary art practice includes installation art, photography, immersive film and performance art practices. Their work explores themes of memory, identity, place and resistance in relation to Indigenous/settler histories. Their work situates the body and the land as collaborative co-creators for the development of visual narrative and embodied storytelling.
Founder of The REDress project in 2009, Black-Morsette has been using their art practice as a way to gather community and create action and change around the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls across Turtle Island for over fifteen years. Her most recent publication, entitled REDress: Art, Action and the Power of Presence, is an anthology that brings together the voices of Indigenous women whose work is grounded in making change and bringing justice to those affected by MMIWG2S.