The William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Visual Artists support emerging visual artists whose practices show potential and who are deemed to have the determination and talent to contribute to the legacy of art in Canada. Three Saunderson Prizes (top prizes) of $10,000 each, as well as three Saunderson Finalists’ Prizes of $4,000 each, are awarded annually.
-
The 2026 call for nominations has closed. We encourage you to subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates on future calls (see the registration form in our website’s footer).
Guidelines (2026) (PDF) — Please review in full before submitting a nomination.
Submissions may be in English or French.
-
2026
Pedro Barbáchano (he/him)
Photo: Courtesy of Pedro Barbáchano.
Pedro Barbáchano is an artist based in Montreal. Through archival research, he traces the circulation of ancient Egyptian heritage to examine postcolonial diplomacy and the roles of photography and museum conservation in constructing touristic spectacle. His work, spanning publications, installations, and exhibitions, has been presented at Centre CLARK, Artexte, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, and The New Gallery.
Barbáchano has received the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art, the Roloff Beny Fellowship, and the Gabor Szilasi Prize in Photography, as well as support from the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2026, he was an artist-in-residence at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris and at Est-Nord-Est in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, QC. He has lectured at Concordia University and contributed to public programming at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. His work is held in private collections in Canada and Spain.
Pedro Barbáchano, Corps Exposé. Installation view at Centre CLARK, Montreal, 2026. Courtesy of Pedro Barbáchano.
Pedro Barbáchano, approximately 760 kg of public property, installation at Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, 2024-2025. Shipping crate, labels, vinyl. 3 × 3 × 3 m. Courtesy of Pedro Barbáchano.
“Receiving a William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Visual Artists is both deeply affirming and transformative. At this stage of my career, being recognized by a jury whose work I respect gives me confidence that my questions on cultural heritage, displacement, and the political lives of images can resonate beyond the specific histories from which they emerge. This prize also has a very concrete impact. My current work is expanding into my first short film, which examines the political inequalities embedded in how bodies are treated after death. This funding will allow me to conceptualize and plan the production of this film as I interview experts and work with a crew, moving between archival work, field research, and early production stages. Beyond its financial value, the prize has made me feel supported within the broader artistic community in Canada. I am profoundly grateful to the Hnatyshyn Foundation and to the jury for this vote of confidence. It strengthens my commitment to continuing the slow, demanding, and often uncertain process of making art.”
Website: pedrobarbachano.com
Instagram: @pedrobarbachano
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona (she/her)Photo: Alex Archimbaud. Courtesy of Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona.
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona is an Inuit multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Ottawa, ON, who creates ceramics, prints, graphic art, wall-hangings and more. Kabloona’s work is inspired by the art of her ancestors and often incorporates traditional Inuit stories told through a modern, feminist lens. Gayle enjoys carrying imagery between mediums, while paying respect to traditional methods and expertise. She shares an intimate view into contemporary Inuit life through her art, storytelling, skill-sharing amongst her community, and writing about her passion for Inuit art and history.
Gayle’s Celebrating Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk was the featured Google Doodle on Google’s home page on Indigenous People’s Day in 2023. Her work was also included in the first annual collection of Truth and Reconciliation stamps from Canada Post in 2022, and is held in institutional collections such as The Gardiner Museum, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Global Affairs Canada, and Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, as well as in private collections internationally.
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Feminist Sedna, 2025. Wool duffel, melton wool and embroidery floss, 138 x 138cm. Photo: Tess Girard and Shelby Lisk (cropped). Courtesy of Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona.
Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Ilakka, 2023. Ceramic, underglaze, glaze. 12.7 × 20.3 × 20.3 cm. Courtesy of Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona.
“Winning this award is an honour and a meaningful milestone in my career as a visual artist. I love connecting my art with audiences, telling visual stories and spreading Inuit art across new platforms. I’m very grateful to the Hnatyshyn Foundation and the Saunderson family for this recognition. This is a wonderful boost to continue artmaking and an opportunity to invest in my future ideas. What a blessing to continue making the art I love.”
Website: Uyagaqi.ca
Instagram: @uyagaqi
Michaëlle Sergile (she/her)
Photo: Vladim Vilain. Courtesy of Michaëlle Sergile.
Michaëlle Sergile (born in Chicago; lives in Canada) is an artist and independent curator. She spent her early childhood in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, before settling in Canada. In her work, she draws on archives from the postcolonial period, including texts and visual documents from the 1950s to the present day. Through the medium of weaving, she seeks to understand and rewrite the histories of Black communities, with a particular focus on women and communities living at various intersections of identity. Often understood as a craft practice associated with femininity, weaving becomes, in her hands, a language through which to question relationships between gender and ethnicity.
Sergile has recently exhibited at the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the Musée d’art de Joliette, the Dakar Off Biennale, the McCord Stewart Museum, and the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris. She has been longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2022) and was named Visual Artist of the Year at the Gala Dynastie (2023). She has participated in residencies at Fonderie Darling (Montreal), Lottozero (Italy), and the Icelandic Textile Center (Iceland). In 2026, Sergile presented her solo exhibition And Then, Perhaps, a Memory at VOX Centre de l’image contemporaine, completed her first museum acquisition in the United States, and exhibited at the MSU Broad Art Museum, which was her first U.S. museum exhibition. Her work will shortly be exhibited at Fondation Clément (Martinique) as part of Paris Noir, an exhibition organized by the Centre Pompidou.
Michaëlle Sergile, And Then, Perhaps, a Memory, 2026. Single weft weavings handwoven with a Jacquard loom and traditional Jack loom, cotton. Installation, 354 x 70”. Photo: Mike Patten. Courtesy of Michaëlle Sergile.
Michaëlle Sergile, Lè m sot Ayiti, 2024. Single weft weavings handwoven on Jacquard loom, cotton, installation, cathode TV, video. 350 × 120”. Photo: Simon Belleau. Courtesy of Michaëlle Sergile.
“I am deeply grateful and honored to receive a William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Visual Artists. As artists, we often move through periods of intense activity and visibility, followed by quieter moments of uncertainty, research, and reflection. These shifts are a natural part of artistic practice, but moments of recognition like this become especially meaningful because they remind us that our work is being seen, understood, and valued.
Receiving this prize feels particularly significant at this stage of my career. In recent years, my practice has continued to evolve through weaving, installation, video, and sculpture, allowing me to expand the ways I engage with archives, memory, and the histories of Black communities.
This award will directly support an important transition in my practice. As I complete my residency at Fonderie Darling, I am preparing to move into a new studio environment and develop a self-managed woodworking space alongside fellow artists. This new chapter will allow me to continue expanding the sculptural and installation-based aspects of my work while building a collaborative environment rooted in exchange and shared knowledge. I am sincerely thankful for this recognition and for the support it represents. Beyond the financial assistance, this award provides encouragement at a moment of growth and reminds me of the importance of continuing to take risks, explore, and imagine new possibilities within my practice.”
Website: michaellesergile.com
Instagram: @michaellesergile
-
2026
This year, The Hnatyshyn Foundation is pleased to increase the value of the Finalists’ Prizes, established in 2025, from $3,000 to $4,000 each.
Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher (she/her)
Photo: Jake Kimble. Courtesy of Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher.
Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher is an interdisciplinary Red River Michif Artist/mother from Treaty Six Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She is currently making and living on the stolen territories of the xwmƏƟkwƏýƏm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and SƏĺílwƏtaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Cabana Boucher is a citizen of Métis Nation Saskatchewan. She has familial ties to the Métis community of St. Louis, Saskatchewan through her paternal lineage and is of British descent through her maternal lineage. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a Master of Fine Arts from OCAD University. Her practice explores the Michif self archive, autobiographical beadwork, and objects of the everyday. Using Métis identity as a place of transformation, she questions how memory, personal experience, motherhood, and ancestral relations influence her understanding of the self.
Cabana Boucher’s work has been exhibited both internationally and nationally. Her recent solo exhibition A memory of you: of holding, of carrying, together toured to Grunt Gallery (Vancouver, BC), SNAP (Edmonton, AB), and the Mary E. Black Gallery at the Centre for Craft Nova Scotia. She was longlisted for the 2024 Lind Prize and the Salt Spring National Art Prize in 2021 and was awarded the Melinda Mayhall Memorial Award in Indigenous Craft in 2026. Her work is held in the TD Indigenous Art Collection and she recently completed a commissioned public art project for the 2026 Capture Photography Festival at the Dal Grauer Substation building in Vancouver.
Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher, Aansaamb, 2025. Site-specific installation on the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation building, Vancouver, as part of the Capture Photography Festival. Photo: Dennis Ha. Courtesy of Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher.
Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher, Many hands of not so light work, 2025. Seed beads, latex gloves, felt, grommets, rock, resin, buttercups. Courtesy of Maria-Margaretta Cabana Boucher
“What an honour to be selected as a finalist for the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Visual Artists. I am especially grateful to the jurors for recognizing my work alongside my fellow nominees and finalists whom I have long admired and respected. Thank you to Caitlin Bodewitz and SNAP Gallery for nominating me and for your continued support. This award will assist in building a sustainable artistic practice that continues to allow me to both care for my daughter and nourish my studio practice. To see the love, care, and stories held within my work be celebrated encourages me to continue sharing and creating for my family and communities. Thank you/Maarsii to the Hnatyshyn Foundation.”
Cabana Boucher is represented by Ceremonial Art.
Instagram: @mariamargaretta
Jake Kimble (any pronouns)
Photo courtesy of Jake Kimble.
Jake Kimble is a multidisciplinary Chipewyan (Dënesųłıné) artist and curator from Treaty 8 territory in the Northwest Territories whose practice revolves around acts of self-care, self-repair, and gender-based ideological refusal. Kimble belongs to the Deninu K’ue First Nation and currently lives, works, and shoots on the stolen territory of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish) and səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. Holding both a degree in Acting from Vancouver Film School as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, Kimble imbues his work with a sense of theatricality and levity, which are core principles in their practice. Through a clever subversion of the everyday aesthetics Kimble also plays with language and ambiguity – something that comes naturally to them as a two-spirited artist. Using a funny bone as a tool, Kimble excavates themes of existentialism, narcissism, and the strange, offering an invitation to the audience to examine the absurdities that exist within the everyday so that they too may exhale, unclench, and even chuckle in the spaces where laughter is often lost.
Kimble has completed residencies at the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Yukon, and the Banff Centre for Arts + Creativity, Alberta, and was the co-curator of the 2024 Contemporary Native Art Biennial (BACA). Most recently, Kimble had their inaugural solo institutional exhibition at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Kimble’s work was featured on the King and Shaw Street billboards for the 2023 Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival and was included in a group exhibition at the Audain Art Museum alongside Adad Hannah, Michelle Sound, and Jin-me Yoon for the 2024 Capture Photography Festival. Their work has been exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions across Canada and can be found in notable collections such as the TD Collection, the Scotiabank Collection, and the Art Gallery of Hamilton.
Jake Kimble, My Guardian Angel is Tired, 2023. 13’ x 59”. Photo: Dennis Ha. Courtesy of Jake Kimble.
Jake Kimble, I’ll Be There Soon, I’m Just Held Up At The Moment, 2026. 37 × 46”. Installation shot by Byron Dauncey. Courtesy of Jake Kimble.
“I have bruises from pinching myself. I know it’s a cliche but it really is just an honour to be nominated. I’m truly grateful to the Hnatyshyn Foundation for this recognition and cash prize! It is a privilege to make work and have that work be seen. I do not take this for granted, even in the slightest. Photography, for me, is a personal form of ceremony – exorcising whatever I am feeling into a photograph allows me to examine, to process, and ultimately to heal. It also allows me to be the author of my own story, and as a two-spirit Chipewyan artist, that’s incredibly important because for so long our stories have not been told by us. The receival of this award bolsters my confidence and lets me know that I’m heading in the right direction. I am one lucky hard-working duck.”
Website: jakekimble.ca
Instagram: @jakekimble
Yen-Chao Lin (she/her)Photo: Ash KG. Courtesy of Yen-Chao Lin.
Yen-Chao Lin’s artistic practice is grounded in an interest in what cannot be seen but can be felt.
Having grown up in a multi-faith family in Taiwan, Lin was exposed early on to vernacular spiritual practices and belief systems, ritual objects, religious imagery, New Age literature, healing crystals, and related forms of material culture. As an adult, she examines religion and spirituality with a critical eye, recognizing the complex social, political, and financial forces that often underpin dogma. These formative experiences continue to shape her work, through which she engages with divination arts, folklore, alchemy, material culture, objecthood, natural history, minerals, and landscape.
Working across sculpture, installation, and experimental film, Lin maintains a practice that is fundamentally research-driven, process-focused, and material-based. She works with diverse media, often integrating analogue technologies and hybridized forms of traditional craft, including glassworking, coppersmithing, and vitreous enamel. Her current work uses dowsing – a traditional divination technique – as both a conceptual framework and a creative methodology to explore forgotten lore, resource extraction, alternative warfare, and the notion of elements hidden in plain sight. Since 2018, she has worked extensively with Canadian copper pennies, using the defunct currency to examine mining, colonial history, and labour. Lin’s experimental film practice is informed by the darkroom alchemical rituals of hand processing and optical printing. Using landscape as a reflection of inner mindscapes, she weaves together her-his-stories, blurring the boundaries between memory and speculation, fact and imagination.
Yen-Chao Lin, Invisible Landscape 景界 (still), 2026. B/W & Color, sound, Super 8 & 16mm to HD, 12:06. Courtesy of Yen-Chao Lin.
Yen-Chao Lin, As Above So Below, 2025. Copper, decarbonized steel, vitreous enamel. Dimensions variable. Photo: Yen-Chao Lin. Courtesy of Yen-Chao Lin.
“Each artist’s path is unique and rarely straightforward. I only began making art in my mid-thirties, so being selected as a finalist for the Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists is a meaningful acknowledgement of my journey: the leap of faith, the self-doubts, the struggles, the rejections, the invisible labour, the creative joy, the passion, the lessons on resilience and tenacity, and the roller coaster of all the spectrums of human emotions required to sustain an artistic practice. I feel extremely honoured and grateful that my work is being seen and acknowledged. The timing of this recognition is especially significant, as my practice is beginning to gain broader momentum. By placing my work on a wider Canadian stage, this award gives me confidence to continue pushing my practice forward. The funding will allow me to undertake research into prehistoric mining and ancestral metalworking techniques, thereby deepening my understanding of the material histories that underpin my current body of work.”
Website: yenchaolin.com
Instagram: @yenchao.lynx
-
2026
Daina Warren, independent curator and laureate of the 2018 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence
Katie Lawson, independent curator and laureate of the 2023 Hnatyshyn Foundation - Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency
Tak Pham, Curator of the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta University of the Arts and laureate of the 2023 Hnatyshyn Foundation - Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency
Erica Chi, Public Art Officer, City of Ottawa (tiebreaker)
