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.’
At Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai, Indian contemporary artist Manish Nai invites viewers to reconsider the materials that surround them. In In Search of Material within Material, a solo exhibition bringing together works created between 2021 and 2026, discarded objects, industrial surfaces and familiar everyday materials become the starting point for an exploration of form, memory and transformation.