She became an artist at 40. Now, Michèle Pearson Clarke is a Sobey nominee at 50

"I'm having a year," says Michèle Pearson Clarke, with a laugh, calling from her home office in Toronto.

There's the Sobey Art Award, of course; Clarke made the 2023 shortlist in June, and before the winner of the Sobey's $100,000 prize is announced in November, she'll be busier than ever, filming a new video project that blends documentary, autobiography and fiction (The Shortest Distance Between Two People), teaching classes at Toronto Metropolitan University (where she's been an assistant professor of photography since 2022) and preparing for the Sobey group exhibition, which opens at the National Gallery of Canada in the fall.  

• Read more CBC Arts coverage of the Sobey Art Awards

And then there's Momenta, the art biennale in Montreal, where she'll be presenting Quantum Choir. Like much of her work, it investigates questions of race, gender and sexuality through her own lived experience, and its centrepiece is a four-channel video installation. In it, four masculine-presenting queer women, including the artist herself, sing the same plaintive pop song: John Grant's "Queen of Denmark."

"I've literally had this lifelong shame about my bad singing voice," says Clarke. But in developing the piece, she decided it was time to turn the camera on her own deep-seated insecurities, marking a new phase for her practice.

"I don't think I could have made that work five years ago," says Clarke, who describes it as "the work of a middle-aged person."

"I think if you're lucky as you age, and you experience more grief and loss and you make peace with middle age … you get more comfortable in your skin, you give less f--ks. If you are able to have that, which I have, then all of a sudden it's like, 'OK, now I'm ready to lean into this.'" 

At 50, Clarke is a decade into her career as an artist. Born in Trinidad, she came to Canada at 19, and earned a master of social work at the University of Toronto. At 40, she went back to school, this time for a life-changing MFA in documentary media at Toronto Metropolitan University, and since graduating in 2015, she's quickly become a thought leader in Canadian arts and culture, notably serving as Toronto's second photo laureate in 2019-2022. 

Just two years ago, Clarke wouldn't have even qualified for the Sobey, an award that was previously limited to emerging artists under 40, and her story is a compelling argument for why the Sobey, and other art prizes, have been right to lift its age restrictions. It's a topic she opened up on when CBC Arts reached her by phone this week.

Congratulations on the Sobey nomination! Could you tell me how you got the news, and how you reacted? What do you remember about that day? 

Michele Pearson Clarke: Melissa Bennett, who was my curator at the AGH [Art Gallery of Hamilton], she was the one who nominated me. I'll be honest, it wasn't on my [radar]. When they first changed the age limit a few years ago, it was the first time that I was eligible as somebody who went back to school later in life and became an artist — a full-time artist. I went back in middle age, really. 

It came as a complete shock and delight, and, you know, there's lots of wonderful things about it, but one of the things that I feel most honoured about is you feel like you are joining this group of Canadian artists across the country who have been through this process and have been recognized in this way. And I know for me, their practices have served as benchmarks. 

Every year when the longlist is announced, I recognize some names, I don't recognize others. I look up all these practices. I learn about amazing work. I can draw inspiration from them and see which practices resonate with my own. To feel this invitation to sort of be part of this group of people — to think I could potentially be part of a group of artists doing that for other artists across the country. 

You mentioned the changes to the Sobey's Award's age limit, and how it was part of your surprise. And yeah, a couple of years ago, your nomination wouldn't have been possible. The Sobey was only considering artists under 40. The fact they've done away with that restriction, I'd love to know your thoughts on that.

Well, it obviously benefits me. (laughs)

People have been calling for equity and anti-oppression for decades, for centuries. You know, this is not new. But we've also seen an increased awareness, particularly over the last decade or so, around the consequences of that, not just for marginalized people, but for everybody. And particularly in the art world, moves towards diversity, equity, inclusion — whatever word that you choose to use — it has come with an understanding, or a growing understanding of, just what diversity is. Diversity is not just about race. Diversity is also about age, right? Diversity of access to experience, access to education.

Other prizes have done the same. And also, artists lobbied for it. There was a group of artists who wrote an open letter and lobbied the Sobeys to make the change, and to their credit, they did. I think it's a progressive choice. When it comes to EDI [equity, diversity and inclusion], there's so many conversations, there's so many panels, there's so many roundtables. So let's talk about it, let's talk about it, let's talk about it. But we need action, right? We need concrete action. And here's an example of a concrete action. For a prize that is on the scale of the Sobeys to take it, to me it demonstrates leadership in the Canadian art ecosystem — that we can't just talk about these things, we have to actually make the changes, we have to do the things. 

Can you tell me a little bit about your own trajectory? I mean, you had an entire career before becoming an artist.

Yeah.

How did you decide to pursue art? Where were you in your life at the time?

I came to creative work, I would say primarily through my involvement with the Inside Out LGBT Film and Video Festival. I came out in my early twenties and I started volunteering at Inside Out because it seemed like a fun way to meet other folks. I think the first thing I did was just, like, ripping tickets at the door for a party. (laughs) But I ended up having something like a two-decade relationship with that festival in which I was a board member, I was staff. And I was an exhibiting filmmaker. 

Inside Out was my film school. It was the first place I saw short film, the first place I saw experimental film. It was the first place where I was listening and participating in conversations about film.

You have all these queer and trans filmmakers, and we're just making films — making it happen. And that, I think, gave me permission to try it myself, you know? 

I just felt really drawn to the medium. Seeing all these films at Inside Out had helped me come more into my queer identity, understand things about the world. Like, I had moved to Canada at 19. I was still figuring a lot of things out, like cultural differences, all of these things. 

Diversity is not just about race. Diversity is also about age, right? Diversity of access to experience, access to education.- Michèle Pearson Clarke, 2023 Sobey Art Award nominee

I thought that it would stay a hobby. It felt wonderful to have this new creative outlet, and, you know, I was working full-time in health communications as a health promoter. But when my mom passed away in 2011, I had a very traumatic grief experience. It cleaved my life in two: like, there's before my mom passed, and then there was after. I had to, in some ways, build a new life for myself. 

I went back to school to do an MFA. It was, for me, my way through.

And also, you know, I always try to be transparent financially. Her death and my inheritance allowed me practically to take the risk of going back to school to try to build an artistic practice at age 40. 

The healing process you were going through when you started your MFA, is your art motivated by the same thing today? Or what ideas drive your practice now?

I do have the same drive, because what drove me back to school was trying to make sense of my grief. I had such a challenging time, not only experiencing the pain of losing my mother, but I wasn't prepared for how uncomfortable my grief made people. It's still so taboo in our culture. 

The isolation that accompanies grief, and the disenfranchisement that accompanies grief — losing friends because they don't know what to say and they haven't ever been taught how to deal with it: that was a whole other layer of loss and pain and confusion. And so my practice really is focused on bringing grief into the public space of the gallery, to use a gallery as a space to allow for us to tend to grief. There is no healing from trauma — there is no healing from any kind of pain or loss — by yourself. You need other people. You need community. 

Once I started to identify as a capital A artist, my first works were directly about the loss of my mom, and I'm interested in the griefs of the communities that I come from. 

Power shapes everything, and Black people and queer people's interior, emotional lives continue to be simplified and reduced in dominant culture, particularly Black folks. We're not understood to have complex interior lives. The griefs you do see depicted tend to be spectacular grief: grief due to police violence. For queer folks, grief due to being kicked out of the house. 

One of the things that surprised me after my mom died was I felt more vulnerable to racism, and I felt more vulnerable to homophobia. I realized that my attachment to her and her love was like a buffer. I went looking, trying to find something to read — some academic text, some book, some something that would help me unpack that a little bit. But I couldn't find a single text or creative project or anything that addressed a Black queer child grieving their mom. Just grieving their mom, you know? And so, I made my thesis about that.

Are there any dream projects that winning the Sobey would make possible for you?

There are a lot of dream projects.

I would like to do my first book and book publishing has become — there are less and less opportunities in book publishing and photo-book publishing. Even if I'm not able to secure a publisher, it will allow me to self-publish. 

It's a project exploring my relationship with my great aunt, Eugenia Charles [former prime minister of Domenica]. She was a public figure, so it'll be a mix of archival photographs — I've begun purchasing photos of her that I find on eBay — as well as photographs I make myself.

There's so much archival research to do. Archival licensing for any kind of documentary work, it's so prohibitive to independent projects. And so this would allow me to reach, I think, into archives that previously may have felt off limits because of budgetary issues.

I just feel very, very grateful to be one of 25 artists, and now to be one of five artists. You know, it is a bit of a nerve wracking experience to go through: there's attention on your practice, there's an exhibition, there's this artist video that you produce, and then, of course, the gala. I'm really looking forward to being able to share that with the other four artists, to have that be a collective experience.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.

The 2023 Sobey Art Award exhibition will be at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa Oct. 13, 2023 - March 3, 2024. The winner of the prize will be announced in November. www.gallery.ca