- 2024 New Generation Photography Award Exhibition, featuring recent works by the two winners
- Pucker Up! The Lipstick Prints of Joyce Wieland, the first in-depth look into this creative series by the iconic Canadian artist
OTTAWA, ON, Feb. 6, 2025 /CNW/ - The National Gallery of Canada's (NGC) 2025 season opens with two new can't-miss installations: the 2024 New Generation Photography Award (NGPA) Exhibition (February 14 to June 1, 2025), featuring works by winners asinnajaq and Mallory Lowe Mpoka, and the vignette exhibition Pucker Up! The Lipstick Prints of Joyce Wieland, opening this Friday, February 7 until October 26, 2025.
"2025 kicks off with two offerings featuring talented artists: asinnajaq and Mallory Lowe Mpoka, the two winners of the 2024 New Generation Photography Award, and iconic Canadian artist Joyce Wieland," said Jean-François Bélisle, Director and CEO, National Gallery of Canada. "The NGPA exhibition offers the opportunity to learn more about the practice and careers of these two compelling lens-based artists. We are also thrilled to present the first in-depth look at Joyce Wieland's creative process for her famous "lipstick" print series. Wieland was the first living Canadian woman artist to have a solo exhibition at the Gallery in the early 1970s."
2024 New Generation Photography Award Exhibition
Launched in 2017, the NGPA supports the careers of talented Canadian artists aged 35 and under working behind the camera, by recognizing outstanding photographic images.
"This year's winners explore the ambiguous roles of photography and video in contemporary postcolonial cultures. Mallory Lowe Mpoka exploits the photograph's materiality, augmenting images through processes reflective of her Cameroonian-Belgian cultural origins. As an Inuk artist who incorporates Inuit culture and values into their work, asinnajaq reflects on this knowledge the land holds and shares it through film, photography and performance," said Andrea Kunard, Senior Curator, Photographs, at the NGC and Chair of the NGPA jury. "With great visual sophistication, care, and curiosity, the NGPA winners demonstrate the continued power and significance of lens-based images to both probe shared concerns and anxieties and offer new insights into negotiating an image saturated culture."
Montreal-based artists asinnajaq and Mallory Lowe Mpoka each receive a $10,000 cash prize and the opportunity to have a selection of their works displayed in an exhibition at the NGC. Andrea Kunard, Senior Curator, Photographs and Jocelyn Piirainen, Associate Curator, Indigenous Ways and Decolonization, both at the NGC, curated the exhibition.
Originally from Inukjuak, Nunavik, asinnajaq has been immersed in storytelling and the sharing of their cultural heritage since childhood. Their practice includes photography, filmmaking, writing and curating. asinnajaq is active as a curator of Inuit art and video projects, including the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019 and the Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. They are the writer/director of Three Thousand (2017), which was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. In 2020, asinnajaq was longlisted for the Sobey Art Award and a member of the Sobey Art Award Jury in 2024.
Mallory Lowe Mpoka, a queer Cameroonian-Belgian multidisciplinary artist, is influenced by stories and experiences that transcend cultural boundaries. Mpoka works across photography, textiles and ceramics to explore issues of identity, kinship and belonging through the lens of the post-colonial. Significant milestones in the artist's career include winning the Malick Sidibé prize awarded by the African Biennale of Photography (2022), and completion of a first artist book Architecture of the Self: What Lives Within Us, co-published by the Clark Center and Pièce Jointe in Fall 2024.
Pucker Up! The Lipstick Prints of Joyce Wieland
Joyce Wieland (1930-1998) was a groundbreaking artist and cultural activist who explored Canadian identity and feminist issues through diverse media, including painting, collage, sculpture, textiles, photography, film, drawing and printmaking.
In 1971, Wieland returned to her hometown of Toronto after a decade in New York City. She had a heightened awareness of national identity, and many of the works she created at this time question what it means to be Canadian. Central to this theme is the series of four "lipstick" or "lip-synch" prints presented in this vignette exhibition.
Joyce Wieland created the first "lipstick" print in the series, at the Lithography Workshop at Halifax's Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1970, by ingeniously replacing oil-based ink with lipstick, with the following three prints made at Open Studio in Toronto (1973).
Her best-known "lipstick" work, O Canada, which depicts her mouth sounding out the syllables of the national anthem, which was officially adopted in 1967, just three years before Wieland created this print. The latter actively responding with her love, all the while acknowledging Canada's cultural complexity and strength in the face of American Imperialism. The print was acquired by the NGC in 1971 and shown that same year at the NGC in Wieland's exhibition True Patriot Love.
"On the cusp of women's rights movement, Wieland's intimate and physical act of pressing her lipstick-clad mouth activated a sensual, ironic, and feminist twist to the male-dominated lyrics of O Canada, that to this day remains provocative and relevant," said Christine Lalonde, Associate Curator, Canadian Art, NGC. "This vignette exhibition brings long-overdue attention to the creative process of Joyce Wieland, highlighting her intelligence, pioneering practice and importance as an artist."
The series was completed in the National Gallery collection in 2024 with the gift of Squid Jiggin' Grounds and The Arctic Belongs to Itself, 1973, from Wieland's close friend Douglas Laing MacPherson, allowing us to bring the four prints together, and present them alongside several studies and lithographic proofs for the first time.
Public programming
The public is invited to celebrate the opening of Pucker Up! The Lipstick Prints of Joyce Wieland and the 2024 New Generation Photography Award Exhibition on Thursday, February 13, 2025, beginning at 5 p.m. ET. A live performance by asinnajaq will take place at 5:15 p.m. ET. At 6:30 p.m. ET, the public is invited to meet the winners and discover their works on view in gallery C218, on Level 2. Admission is free from 5 to 8 p.m.
Lens-based initiatives at the NGC, including the 2024 New Generation Photography Award, are made possible with the gracious support of the National Gallery of Canada Foundation.
About the National Gallery of Canada
Founded in 1880, the National Gallery of Canada is among the world's most respected art institutions. As a national museum, we exist to serve all Canadians, no matter where they live. We do this by sharing our collection, exhibitions and public programming widely. We create dynamic experiences that allow for new ways of seeing ourselves and each other through the visual arts, while centering Indigenous ways of knowing and being. Our mandate is to develop, preserve and present a collection for the learning and enjoyment of all – now and for generations to come. We are home to more than 90,000 works, including one of the finest collections of Indigenous and Canadian art, major works from the 14th to the 21st century and extensive library and archival holdings.
Ankosé – Everything is connected – Tout est relié
About the National Gallery of Canada Foundation
The National Gallery of Canada Foundation is dedicated to supporting the National Gallery of Canada in fulfilling its mandate. By fostering strong philanthropic partnerships, the Foundation provides the Gallery with the additional financial support required to lead Canada's visual arts community locally, nationally and internationally. The blend of public support and private philanthropy empowers the Gallery to preserve and interpret Canada's visual arts heritage. The Foundation welcomes present and deferred gifts for special projects and endowments. To learn more about the National Gallery of Canada Foundation, visit ngcfoundation.ca.
SOURCE National Gallery of Canada
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