Announcing the Winners of the 2025 Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Visual Artists
August 20, 2025
It is with great pleasure that we announce the laureates of our William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Visual Artists: Mallory Lowe Mpoka (Left), Holly Chang (centre) and Luther Konadu (right). For the first time in the awards’ history, we are pleased to also award secondary prizes to the three finalists who placed closest to the laureates. We congratulate Shellie Zhang, Rihab Essayh and Haley Bassett on being this year’s finalists.
About the prizes
The William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Visual Artists consist of three awards of $10,000 each (formerly $5,000) to support young 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. This is the eleventh edition of the prizes, and is the second year with the updated prize value. The introduction of finalist prizes, of $3,000 each, recognizes the high volume of interest in the awards and the extraordinary quality of artists’ applications.
Selection process
2025 has been the Saunderson Prizes’ most popular year to date. The laureates were selected from a pool of 59 candidates nominated by artist-run-centres, galleries, and fine arts professionals from all over Canada. The Hnatyshyn Foundation sincerely thanks the galleries and arts professionals who submitted nominations, and the artists who presented work for consideration.
Portfolios were evaluated by Wanda Nanibush (artist and curator, laureate of the 2024 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence) and Curtis Talwst Santiago (artist, laureate of the 2024 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts).
Top prizes
MALLORY LOWE MPOKA
Photo: Odeon Davis
Cameroonian-Belgian artist Mallory Lowe Mpoka (b.1996) lives and works in Montreal. In her practice, she enfolds photography into an expanded sensual experience to address notions of place, home and memorialization. Positioned by the violence of colonization that inflicts historical and cultural rupture on identity, she engages in a multi-faceted and fluid practice to explore the often elusive connections between real and imagined histories. Supplementing the materiality of photographs with weaving, ceramics, dyeing and sculptural augmentation, Mpoka reanimates and re-situates her family archives. Her work expresses a nomadic state of constant in-betweenness through the incorporation of multiple time periods and spatial connections, inspired by her journeys between different continents – Africa, Europe and North America.
Mpoka was nominated for the Malick Sidibé Prize (2022) and the New Generation Photography Award from the National Gallery of Canada (2024). She has exhibited internationally at Villa Romana (Italy), the Art Gallery of Ontario, 1-54 NYC (USA), and Savvy Contemporary (Germany). In November 2024, she released her debut artist book Architecture of the Self: What Lives Within Us. She will be presenting her debut solo show at Fonderie Darling as part of the MOMENTA Biennale this fall.
Website: lowemallory.com
Instagram: @LoweMallory
Architecture of the Self: What Lives Within Us
“I’m grateful for this financial support, which will help sustain the realization of my solo exhibition at Fonderie Darling for the MOMENTA Biennale. It will also allow me to invest in materials for an upcoming woven piece, while offering time and flexibility to further nurture my studio practice.”
Mallory Lowe Mpoka. In the Weft of Memory, 2025. Mercerized cotton, clay beads, red pigments, jacquard weaving, embroidery. 85 x 115 in. Installation view, National Gallery of Canada.
Mallory Lowe Mpoka. Architecture of the Self: What Lives With(in) Us, 2021-ongoing. Photo: Alison Postma.
HOLLY CHANG
Photo: Caeden Wigston.
Holly Chang is an interdisciplinary artist from Toronto. Incorporating photography, ceramics, textiles, collage, and found and discarded textiles, archives, and images, her practice explores how forming and re-forming materials can construct new narratives around identity. As someone who occupies a hybrid cultural identity, as both Jamaican and Chinese, and who identifies as queer, Chang is interested in investigating the intersections and parallels between ways of existing. She interchangeably combines and merges craft mediums to unpack the layered emotional nuances that accompany the anxieties surrounding a hybrid and mixed identity. In her work, she explores identity as it relates to craft and material processes through the documentation and subversion of topics such as nature, ecologies, and history. She looks towards her community for inspiration and to learn ways of retelling stories.
Website: holly-mcclay-chang.com
Instagram: @holly.m.chang
“I am so grateful to be recognized and to receive this prize. This prize is impactful to me because it allows me to continue my pursuit and passion of visual arts. It is an honour to be included amongst many amazing artists in Canada and to be held to a similar degree.”
Holly Chang. Ceramic Death Suit, 2024. Ceramic tiles, waxed cord, steel jump rings, cotton cord, 3 x 5 ft. Photo: Rafaela Conde.
Holly Chang. How to Disappear when No One is Looking, 2024. Billboards for CONTACT Photography Festival. Construction paper, ballpoint pen, 4x6 in. prints, double sided tape. Curated by Heather Rigg. Photo: Darren Rigo.
LUTHER KONADU
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Luther Konadu (b. 1991) is an artist based in Winnipeg (Treaty 1). His studio practice encompasses photography and incorporates sculptural elements. In his work, he acknowledges the constructed nature and multiple legacies of the photographic medium, considering it as an interpretive site for complicating the conventions of depiction and narrativization, and generating new ones.
Konadu’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Aperture, and FOAM International Photography Magazine. He is the winner of several national awards, including BMO 1st Art!, the New Generation Photography Award, and the Salt Spring National Art Prize. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; Remai Modern, Saskatoon; The Polygon Gallery, Vancouver; SBC galerie d’art contemporain, Montreal; Filter Space, Chicago; the Center for Photography at Woodstock, New York; Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
“I receive this vote of confidence from the jury with much gratitude. This prize will go far in helping me reinvest needed time and renewed energy into my practice and propel my work toward new generative directions.”
Luther Konadu. Figure as Index, 2019. Archival print. Courtesy of the artist.
Luther Konadu. Ambient Photo, 2025. Photo installation, documented by Toni Hafkenschied at Two Seven Two gallery.
FINALIST PRIZES
HALEY BASSETT
Haley Bassett in her studio. Photo: Piper Productions.
Haley Bassett is an interdisciplinary artist of Red River Métis and settler descent from Treaty 8 and the Métis Homeland, also known as British Columbia (BC)’s Peace River Region. She is a registered citizen of Métis Nation BC. Her practice incorporates various mediums, including locally harvested natural materials, found objects, painting, sculpture, installation, beadwork, and textile arts. She has received the Opus Art Supplies Graduation Award, a SSHRC Graduate Scholarship, and a BC Arts Council Early Career Development Grant. Her work has been acquired by the Canada Council Art Bank and the RBC Art Collection.
“My path to a career in the arts was unconventional and circuitous. I dropped out of high school and spent several years working in the oil and gas industry before graduating. I began undergraduate studies at Emily Carr University at the age of 27 […]. Growing up in northeast BC, I wasn’t aware that young, successful contemporary artists even existed. Meeting Stipan Tadić shifted my worldview and gave me hope for a career in the arts. Other artists who influenced me include Peter von Tiesenhausen, who taught me that it’s possible to build a fulfilling life and career while staying rooted in one’s community, and Brendan Tang, whose work encouraged me to explore identity and the elements that shape who we are.”
Website: haleybassett.com
Instagram: @haley.bassett
“This award not only provides much-needed financial support, but it has also strengthened my commitment to my practice. Being a finalist has made me even more determined to produce my best work.”
Haley Bassett. Transcience, 2019-2024. Acrylic, oil, thread and vintage seed beads on linen. 20 x 16 in. Photo: Norberg Hall.
RIHAB ESSAYH
Photo: Clara Lacasse.
Rihab Essayh is a Moroccan-born, Montréal-raised interdisciplinary artist working in large-scale installation. Her approach is informed by the theoretical foundations of radical softness and Afrofuturism. In fusing ideas from both, she defines her signature ethos of soft futurism — a sensibility that unapologetically imagines new and equitable futures, recognizing vulnerability and interdependence as pillars of collective liberation and well-being.
Essayh earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Guelph in 2022. Her work has been exhibited at the Conseil des arts de Montréal, the Art Gallery of Guelph, Union Gallery, Arsenal Contemporary, McBride Contemporain, the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, the Tom Thomson Art Gallery, and the Art Museum at the University of Toronto. She is a recipient of a SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship and her work has been acquired by the RBC Art Collection. She is the 2025–2026 artist-in- residence at Concordia University.
Website: rihabessayh.com
Instagram: @rihabessayh
“Being a finalist for the William and Meredith Saunderson Prizes for Emerging Artists is a profound honour. I am especially grateful to Megan Kammerer for nominating me following our year-long collaboration on To our reunited future at the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington — an experience rooted in care, softness, and mutual respect. To be recognized by a jury that includes Wanda Nanibush and Curtis Santiago, voices I deeply admire, makes this recognition all the more meaningful.”
Rihab Essayh. Installation view, To our reunited future, 2025. Curated by Megan Kammerer, Visual Arts Centre of Clarington. Photo: LF Documentation.
SHELLIE ZHANG
Photo: Courtesy of the artist.
Shellie Zhang (b. 1991, Beijing) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Toronto and New Haven, CT. Through a diverse range of media, Zhang explores how histories of translation, migration, and memory leave traces and impressions. Her work examines the processes of integration and assimilation, the ways in which culture is learned, sustained, and negotiated, how manifestations of these ideas relate to lived experiences, and how symbols and icons are remembered and preserved. Influenced by oral and local histories, language, signage, and daily rituals, Zhang’s practice seeks to locate sacredness, resilience, and familiarity within the transformation of cultural symbols, forming new visual languages through hybridity.
Zhang has exhibited at Asian Art Initiative (Philadelphia) and the Institute of Contemporary Art San Diego. She is the recipient of a Toronto Arts Council’s Visual Projects grant, an Ontario Arts Council’s Visual Artists Creation Grant, and a Canada Council for the Arts Project Grant. She is a member of EMILIA-AMALIA, an intergenerational feminist reading and writing group. She was Artist-in-Residence at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2017), received the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Award (2021), and was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award (2025). Her work is included in the collections of the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the McMaster Museum of Art. It has been published in Frieze, Canadian Art, the Toronto Star, Blackflash Magazine, and CBC Arts.
Website: shelliezhang.com
Instagram: @shelliezhang
“It is an honour to be recognized as a finalist. I am deeply grateful for the support, and to be included among such inspiring company. In a time when sustaining a career in the arts feels increasingly uncertain yet increasingly urgent, this kind of recognition and encouragement means more than words can express. Thank you to the Hnatyshyn Foundation for believing in and supporting artists.”
Shellie Zhang. Can we live here forever? 我们可以一直活在这 里吗?, 2023. Hand-painted bamboo curtain, wire, aluminum alloy, magnets. 72 x 2 x 78 in. Photo: Darren Rigo.
Thank you
The Hnatyshyn Foundation wishes to sincerely thank Bill and Meredith Saunderson for their continued support. Thanks to their generosity, we are proud to have celebrated and rewarded the work of 33 Canadian emerging visual artists — and counting.
If you are interested in having an award for Canadian artists named after you or a loved one, please feel free to contact the Foundation. Details on planned giving can be found here.
Coming soon
This fall, we look forward to announcing the laureates of our remaining 2025 prizes, including the Developing Artist Grants, the inaugural Gerda Hnatyshyn Launch Grants, the DARC Indigenous Residency, the Joysanne Sidimus Ballet Grant, the University of Saskatchewan Scholarship for Indigenous Students in Drama, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation – Christa and Franz-Paul Decker Fellowship in Conducting.
