On Thursday, The Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada announced that the Sobey Art Award, a prize for artists under 40, would not be awarded this year in response to the ongoing pandemic. Instead, the prize money and funds earmarked for artist residencies and an annual gala (making $625,000 CAD in all), would be shared among the 25 longlisted artists. Ron Sobey, chair of the Sobey Art Foundation, said, ‘These extraordinary, historic, and challenging circumstances will have a profound impact on the livelihoods and practices of artists across Canada and around the world.’
Once a place where sea, desert, and palm groves coexisted in rare harmony, Tunisia’s Gabès Oasis stands today as one of the world’s most fragile cultural-environmental sites. At its heart is artist Mohamed Amine Hamouda, whose ecological practice offers a form of resistance—one built on memory, materials, and a return to ancestral knowledge.