Kablusiak on 2023 Sobey Art Award win: 'You dream about this stuff when you're an art school kid'

Kablusiak is the winner of the 2023 Sobey Art Award. The $100,000 prize is considered one of Canada's top honours in contemporary art, and after celebrating in Ottawa — where the prize was announced at the National Gallery of Canada — the Inuvialuk artist is already back home in Calgary, still processing the life-changing events of the weekend.

"I'm clearly so super emotional about it," said Kablusiak in a video call with CBC Arts, wiping away tears. "I'm a happy crier. That's my blessing and my curse."

"It was so surreal. You think about this stuff — you dream about this stuff — when you're an art school kid. But oh my god, this is real?! What the heck! [I have] so much gratitude." 

Kablusiak's art school days aren't all that far behind them. The 30-year-old artist, who uses they/them pronouns, was raised in Edmonton and currently lives and works in Calgary, where they earned a BFA from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2016. By 2019, they'd already attracted the attention of the Sobey Art Award; Kablusiak previously made the shortlist that year. 

Both then and now, their practice spans an eclectic range of mediums: photography, sculpture, drawing — even lingerie. It's work that explores contemporary life in the Inuit diaspora, while upending colonial stereotypes of what Inuit art should be: think soapstone sculptures of 7-Eleven candy and tampons; Ookpiks remixed with Garfield and Furby. As they told CBC Arts in June after making this year's shortlist: "I'm always hoping to either make someone laugh or cry — or hopefully both."  

In a statement, award jury chair Jonathan Shaughnessy said: "The 2023 Sobey Art Award jury felt compelled by Kablusiak's fearless and unapologetic practice that confounds old categories and art histories and points to new imaginaries. Their multidisciplinary vocabulary deploys the experience of being looked at without being seen that shapes Inuit and queer realities in both the art world and society at large." 

A jury of Canadian and international curators selected Kablusiak from a shortlist of five artists who each represent a different region of the country: Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill (West Coast and Yukon), Séamus Gallagher (Atlantic), Anahita Norouzi (Quebec) and Michèle Pearson Clarke (Ontario). Every nominee receives $25,000, and the prize is jointly administered by the Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada. 

For three years in a row, the winner has repped the same region: Prairies and North. Winnipeg's Divya Mehra was the Sobey victor in 2022 and Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory (Iqaluit) won the prize in 2021. "Maybe it's the water," said Kablusiak, with a chuckle. In June, the artist told CBC Arts that if they won the Sobey, they'd be buying a house in Calgary — and Alberta is where they've definitively chosen to live and work. "The arts community here is so supportive," said Kablusiak, who keeps a studio at Calgary artist-run centre The Bows. "It would be hard to leave that behind."

According to Kablusiak, the $100,000 in prize money will give them the financial freedom to experiment more freely in their art practice. "I told my gallerist after the announcement that I wanted to go crazy at Costco," said Kablusiak. But joking aside, they're keen to try some big, new things — like creating a monumental bronze sculpture, for example. "I'm just excited to make work and to just keep going."

Since its founding in 2002, the Sobey Art Award has gone to artists including Annie Pootoogook (2006), Ursula Johnson (2017) and Stephanie Comilang (2019). A group exhibition featuring work by all of this year's nominees will be appearing at the National Gallery of Canada through March 3, 2024.