Howie Tsui and Crystal Mowry are the laureates of the 2026 Mid-Career Awards!
August 15, 2026
Photos: Howie Tsui (Left. Photo: Rémi Thériault, courtesy of Howie Tsui) and Crystal Mowry (Right. Photo: Carey Shaw, courtesy of Crystal Mowry)
The Hnatyshyn Foundation is thrilled to present the 20th Mid-Career Awards for Excellence in Visual Arts and Curatorial Excellence to Howie Tsui and Crystal Mowry!
Since 2006, the Hnatyshyn Foundation has honoured the exceptional work of Canadian artists and curators through its annual Mid-Career Awards, valued respectively at $30,000 (formerly $25,000) and $20,000 (formerly $15,000). These prestigious awards recognize professionals who have demonstrated excellence and innovation in their bodies of work and show promise of outstanding artistic or curatorial achievement in the years ahead.
The selection committees for each award felt that this distinction was timely for both of this year’s laureates, considering their respective achievements and that both have previously been shortlisted. Without a doubt, the Canadian arts landscape is richer as a result of their work, and we are happy to honour their contributions through these awards. Both laureates are forging unique paths with their careers: Tsui, through his creative use of technology and historical materials in his art-making; and Mowry, through her exemplary human-centred approach to curation.
About the laureates
HOWIE TSUI
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts
Howie Tsui (徐浩恩, b. Hong Kong) is an interdisciplinary artist based on unceded Coast Salish territories. His practice spans ink brush painting, interactive sound sculpture, lenticular light box and installation. Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that gleefully deflate revered art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm the homogenizing agendas of broadening regimes. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order/chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, surveillance and the “abject other” through a wry outsider sensibility - casting light onto the contradictions of diasporic life.
Select solo exhibitions include: Patel Brown, Toronto (2025), Hanart TZ, Hong Kong (2024); Glenbow Museum (2023); Art Windsor-Essex (2022); Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (2021); The Power Plant, Toronto (2020); Ringling Museum of Art, US (2020); Ottawa Art Gallery (2019); OCAT Museum, Xi’an (2018) and the Vancouver Art Gallery (2017). Select group exhibitions include: Macao International Art Biennale (2023); Art Gallery of New South Wales (2022); Tai Kwun Contemporary; Hong Kong (2021), Para Site, Hong Kong (2014); and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2013). Tsui’s work is included in the following public collections: National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Canada Council Art Bank, McMichael Canadian Art Collection, Ottawa Art Gallery, City of Ottawa, Global Affairs Canada, RBC Collection, Centre d’exposition de Baie-Saint-Paul and M+ Museum of Visual Culture. Tsui received the Canada Council for the Arts’ Joseph Stauffer Prize (2005), was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2018) and was shortlisted for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award (2024). He holds a BFA from the University of Waterloo.
“To be recognized in this way affirms that the quiet, diligent work I dedicate to my practice can be found, understood — and considered belonging within the Canadian contemporary art community. The award anchors my convictions, silences the bouts of debilitating doubt that seep in through the crevasses, and emboldens the pursuit of works that might otherwise remain unrealized.
My deepest thanks to the jury members for their thoughtful support and acknowledgement — so very humbling. And my deep gratitude to the Hnatyshyn Foundation for offering such a generous award focused on what is, frankly, a sneaky-precarious arc in an artist’s career. I want to congratulate all the longlisted and shortlisted artists for their brilliance and continued grind. I look forward to engaging with their work.”
Tsui, Howie. The Banquet, 2023. Paint pigment and ink on mulberry paper mounted on silk. 106.5 × 218 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Hanart TZ Gallery.
Selection Committee
We extend our sincere thanks to the jurors who contributed to this year’s selection process:
Corrie Jackson - RBC Senior Curator
Joy Xiang - Editor, C Magazine
Catherine Sinclair - Director, Director, Exhibitions and Collections Care, National Gallery of Canada
Richard Hill - Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery
Elliott Ramsey - Curator, The Polygon Gallery
Members of the selection committee stressed their admiration for Tsui’s visually-innovative multi-media practice that creatively combines historical references, contemporary technology, humour, and a commitment to world-building. Elliott Ramsey described Tsui as having been “ahead of the curve for a long time, with both uses of technology and cross-cultural juxtapositions in art.” Richard Hill added that he “brings a lot of complicated things together and combines them with humour and irony.” The Foundation looks forward to following how this well-deserved award will fuel Tsui’s continued artistic exploration.
Tsui, Howie. Parallax Chambers at Hanart TZ, 2018-ongoing. Single-channel algorithmic animation sequence. Photo: Kitmin Lee, Hanart TZ Gallery. Courtesy of Howie Tsui.
Tsui, Howie. An Elegy for Dust #1 (earth), 2024. Yixing purple clay pot, stones, stoneware, Chinese ink, metallic paint, patina, wax paste, horsehair, foam, wire, epoxy, cyanoacrylate, black quartz gravel, aquasoil, lava rock and joss sticks. 72 L x 80 H x 47 D cm. Photo: Rachel Topham, Chinese Canadian Museum. Courtesy of Howie Tsui.
Website: www.howietsui.com
CRYSTAL MOWRY
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence
Crystal Mowry (she/her) is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery, a position she has held since 2021. She previously served as Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collections, and publishing for over a decade. Her work often explores the tension between perceived authenticity and troubled forms of representation. As a curator operating primarily within a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, drawing on roots in studio practice to support artists in the development and subsequent touring of new projects. Her career path has been shaped by curiosity and a particular interest in how to make a public trust a site for experimentation. This has led her to work as an artist, a studio assistant, and in unconventional creative gigs before entering museum work in 2005.
Mowry’s curatorial work includes thematic group exhibitions such as The Limits (2011), Imitation of Life (2015), I’ll be your Mirror (2018), What the Bat Knows (2022), and Thick as Thieves (2025). In 2013, she co-curated Romancing the Anthropocene, one of three zones commissioned by the City of Toronto for its annual Nuit Blanche event. Her solo projects with artists Deanna Bowen, Maggie Groat, and Ernest Daetwyler have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (now Galeries Ontario Galleries). She is a recipient of a Waterloo Region Arts Award (2020) and has been shortlisted for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence (2024, 2025). Her writing has appeared in various artist-focused publications on the work of artists such as Brendan Fernandes, Shary Boyle, August Klintberg, Annie MacDonell, among others. She regularly serves on industry juries and advisory panels, most notably for the Sobey Art Award (2015), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2021), and the Canadian pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Crystal was born in Tkaronto (Toronto), where she completed undergraduate studies in sculpture and installation at the Ontario College of Art and Design University before earning a Master of Fine Arts degree at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Kjipuktuk (Halifax). She is currently based in Treaty 4 (Regina), where she lives with her family.
“It has been a privilege to count artists as my most inspired educators over the years. They have taught me how to centre curiosity in my work and to consider our shared questions – from the ones posed in the intimacy of the studio to the speculative prompts we work through in written offerings – a record of what we realize anew together.
As someone who always felt like I had more questions than answers, I am humbled to be in the company of the incredible colleagues – the long list, preceding laureates, and the jury – who have inspired me through their own curatorial accomplishments. My curatorial work most often unfolds deliberately in museums because I believe they are spaces where we can still learn in public, and where if we are lucky, a record of that learning contributes to a public trust.
Mid-career award attention is a reminder that there is still time to be a fulcrum, to consider unexpected shifts in your practice with assurance from your peers. I am deeply honoured by this award and grateful to be recognized in this moment.”
Installation view of Deanna Bowen: Black Drones in the Hive, 2020. Curated by Crystal Mowry at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Photo: Toni Hafkensheid. © Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Artwork © Deanna Bowen. Courtesy of Crystal Mowry.
Selection Committee
We extend our sincere thanks to the jurors who contributed to this year’s selection process:
Séamus Gallagher - Artist and laureate of a 2024 William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Visual Artists
Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Tagata Sāmoa) - Artist and Curator of Indigenous Practices, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
Michèle Pearson Clarke - Visual Artist and Assistant Professor of Photography, Toronto Metropolitan University
Sandra Dyck - Executive Director, The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, BC
Karen Tam - Artist shortlisted for the 2025 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts, Montreal, and Adjunct Curator, Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver
The selection committee was moved by Mowry’s sincere commitment to the artists and communities at the centre of her work, both in her institutional roles at the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and as an independent curator. The committee noted her care, generosity, wisdom, and professionalism, and was unanimous in the view that this award was a timely recognition of her work.
“Crystal Mowry is brilliant and courageous. She builds deep worlds. I love her description of a curator as a co-conspirator and translator—she works alongside, never above. Her work is steeped in care, humility, and curiosity, always with artists at the centre. […]
When Crystal speaks, people listen. She has a way with words, and she is wise. She sets a high standard of professionalism, accountability, commitment, and rigour. She may be at the mid-point of her career, but I think of her as an elder in our field, and it is an honour to observe and learn from her work.”
Installation view of Annie MacDonell: The Beyond Within (2023). Organized and circulated by the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, in collaboration with the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Curated by Crystal Mowry and Leila Timmins. Photo credit: Carey Shaw. © MacKenzie Art Gallery. Artwork © Annie MacDonell. Courtesy of Crystal Mowry.
Installation view of Maggie Groat: Suns also Seasons (2017). Curated by Crystal Mowry at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Photo: Jimmy Limit © Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Artwork © Maggie Groat. Courtesy of Crystal Mowry.
The Hnatyshyn Foundation extends a heartfelt congratulations to Howie Tsui and Crystal Mowry!
For more information about the Mid-Career Awards, including the selection process, shortlists, longlists, and former laureates, visit the Mid-Career Awards’ program page.
