Maria Hupfield – Artist Prize 2023
A huge congratulations to Maria Hupfield on receiving the 2025 Ontario Arts Council Indigenous Arts Award! Maria Hupfield’s work was recognized as groundbreaking and inspirational to audiences across North America.

IN AND AROUND TORONTO:

Isabel Okoro – Artist Prize 2024
DesignTO Festival 2026 launched with a kick off on January 23, 2026 at the Museum of Contemporary Art with the Jeff Wall exhibition and with sounds curated by local·global featuring Isabel Okoro and Adeola Abegunde.

Isabel Okoro – Artist Prize 2024
Sandra Brewster – Artist Prize 2018
Kelly Mark – Artist Prize 2002
The group exhibition Reminds Me of Home at the Olga Korper Gallery includes works by Isabel Okoro, Sandra Brewster and Kelly Mark. The exhibition is on until February 14, 2026.

David Liss – Founders Achievement Award 2015
The legacy of Sybil Goldstein, one of the founding members of Toronto’s ChromaZone Collective, is celebrated in the exhibition Urban Myths curated by David Liss at Koffler 301 until March 1, 2026. The exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter the full breadth of Goldstein’s vision and includes many artworks never seen by the public until now.

Nadia Belerique – Artist Prize 2015
Derek Liddington – Artist Prize 2011
The group exhibition Traces, at Daniel Faria Gallery until February 21, 2026, includes work by Nadia Belerique and Derek Liddington. The focus of the exhibition is that which has been left behind: detritus, fingerprints, markings, forgotten histories, shadows, echoes.

Edward Burtynsky – Founders Achievement Award 2008
Art in Action: Climate, a new festival of arts, ideas, and industry extended across the Niagara Region from January 30, 2026 until February 8, 2026. The festival included Edward Burtynsky’s multimedia exhibition In the Wake of Progress. The 22-minute work uses video and photographs from the entire span of Burtynsky’s career, choreographed to an award-winning original score composed by Phil Strong, with vocals by award-winning Cree Métis artist iskwē and performances by musicians of The Glenn Gould School at The Royal Conservatory of Music.

At Metivier Gallery until February 21, 2026 is a group exhibition Land and Form which includes the work of Edward Burtynsky. Land and Form explores how each of the participating artists pushes the notion of the landscape beyond literal representation. Shape, gesture, and colour are mobilized to explore light, atmosphere, and emotion.

Mark Bell – Artist Prize 2004
Paul Petro Contemporary Art is presenting Infrastructures, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Mark Bell from February 13 to March 21, 2026. This series of paintings evolved out of Bell’s observations around the city’s peripheral areas; places where the inner workings of our infrastructure are on full display.

Adam David Brown – Artist Prize 2009
Until February 21, 2026, Smokestack Published Projects is presenting a group exhibition of prints including the work of Adam David Brown. Work in the exhibition represents Smokestack’s recent editions, independent releases and works produced through past residencies.

Shaheer Zazai – Artist Prize 2024
Shaheer Zazai’s recent work is featured in an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Mississauga from January 24 to April 12, 2026. The exhibition brings together Toronto-based Afghan Canadian artist Shaheer Zazai and Mississauga-based Tamil Canadian artist Whyishnave Suthagar. Both artists have created new bodies of work that engage with elements from their respective cultural heritage to create immersive, contemplative environments.
Zazai’s installation “A Petal For a Petal, A Deed For a Deed—The  Garden We Could Have Been” draws upon the floral motif in Afghan carpets which appeared in his past work. Here it appears at an immense scale, on wall scrolls and an illuminated mosaic on the gallery ceiling. A garden of paradise becomes a garden of consequence, as floral sentinels rise in judgement of the destruction humans create and the warnings left unheard.

Sameer Farooq – Artist Prize 2022
The solo exhibition by Sameer Farooq at the Varley Art Gallery encourages sustained contemplation of his recent sculptures. The Fairest Order in the World, is accompanied by an audio component and a film titled “The Museum Visits a Therapist” where Sameer questions art in museums, considering past, present and future narratives, restitution and future possibilities. The exhibition is on from February 7 to May 3, 2026

Alvin Luong – Artist Prize 2023
Alvin Luong’s film “Dephinitely Paradise (2026)” is his third and final work of a trilogy. He interviews a former Vietnam refugee who fled to Pulau Bidong, looking at displacement and trade and the analogies between Bidong’s refugees and coral farming and rehabilitation. The film is accompanied by steel rebar sculptures and frottage works including suspended frottage banners. The exhibition is at Mercer Union from February 13 to May 9, 2026.

Erica deFreitas – Artist Prize 2016
At the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (Rideau Building alternate space) in Kingston, ON, the exhibition “Midheaven”, curated by Emelie Chhangur, includes work created by Stacey Sproule in collaboration with four other artists including Erica DeFreitas. The works centre on the astrological point of the Midheaven and its dialogue with our public lives. Each work explores the sky, weather, air and atmosphere as reflections of artistic labour. On view from January 30 to March 29.

FOR TRAVELLERS: 

Elsewhere in Canada

Maria Hupfield – Artist Prize 2023
DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art and Phi Centre in Montrealare presenting Path of Resilience, a public art project comprising three new commissioned installations by Maria Hupfield, Nadia Myre, and Skawennati along Promenade urbaine Fleuve-Montagne, a new walkway from the Saint Lawrence River to Mount Royal. The path, a legacy project for Montreal’s 375th anniversary, gives visitors an opportunity to experience the iconic heart of Montreal in a whole new way. The installations, based on the interrelated themes of time, memory, history, and affirmation are infused with the artists’ Indigenous heritage and use different strategies for occupying space.
Hupfield’s installation KAPOW! consists of two specially designed benches that enter into a dialogue with the trees behind the Square Victoria-OACI Metro station, an area used by tourists as well as local residents and workers. The word “KAPOW” connotes action, movement, and breath. The work, with its geometric patterns that make reference to comic book speech balloons and lightning bolts, acts as a social sculpture that redefines how we interact with public spaces and the natural world.

Germaine Koh – Artist Prize 2002
The Belkin Gallery presents in its first exhibition of 2026, “The Structure of Smoke”, featuring work by Germaine Koh. Entitled “Prayers”, it explores smoke as a means of communication. Viewers can type messages into an interface which are then translated into Morse code and sent to a smoke machine on the galley roof that emits long and short puffs of smoke. Closes April 12, 2026.

Also at UBC, Koh developed a “Slow Fashion Research Centre” in 2024 that continues to build upon her work with upcycled materials in textile and clothing production. The goal of the Centre, which now includes over a dozen faculty members, community partners, researchers and students is to encourage more dialogue and research on sustainability in fashion and a circular textile economy.

Shannon Garden Smith – Artist Prize 2025 
Work by Shannon Garden-Smith is included with seven other artists in “La Clarte Creuse les Montagnes” at the Musee d’Art de Joliette, curated by Ariane de Blois. The exhibition took shape by exploring the theme: What can art do in the face of the world’s adversity? From pottery to installation, painting, weaving, performance and video, the works presented articulate a political scope that is manifested as much in the formal and material choices as in the subject matter they create.

South of the Border

Alexa Hatanaka – Artist Prize 2023
At the Fridman Gallery in New York City until March 7, 2026, the group exhibition, Sanctuary, examines the root causes and psychological effects of displacement. The title of the exhibition refers both to “sanctuary cities” which are supposed to afford legal protection for immigrants, and, in a more general sense, to sanctuaries as physical and emotional safe spaces. Alexa Hatanakais one of the artists featured in the exhibition.

Tau Lewis – Artist Prize 2019
Beginning March 21, 2026, the exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future will inaugurate NYC’s New Museum expanded building with an exploration of artists’ enduring preoccupation with what it means to be human in the face of sweeping technological changes. Tau Lewis is one of the 150 artists whose work will be shown in this exhibition.

Nep Sidhu – Artist Prize 2017
On February 3, 2026, Nep Sidhu and Rajni Perera gave a talk as part of the the Valade Speaker Series at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit in which they unpacked their experience of creation for the project In The Realm of Lightning which was exhibited in Toronto in the summer of 2021, as well as the conception and creation of distinctive works made throughout their careers separately and together.

Camille Turner – Artist Prize 2018
“Land of the Free”, at the University Museum of Contemporary Art, UMassis a cinematic presentation by Camille Turner on the lives of people transported in the holds of slave ships, featuring her new film “80 Died of Flux and Flu”. Turner spent the fall of 2025 as artist in residence jointly between the museum and Slavery North, a UMass based research institute. Opened Feb 6 and closing May 8, 2026.

Internationally 

Lotus L. Kang – Artist Prize 2015
Lotus Kang is one of the artists whose work is featured in Rituals of Perception, an exhibition at the Tanoto Art Foundation in Singapore until March 1, 2026. The exhibition gathers works born from intimate dialogues between body and matter, unfolding through slow, contemplative, and iterative processes.

Alexa Hatanaka – Artist Prize 2023,
Shaheer Zazai – Artist Prize 2024
The work of both artists was exhibited by Patel Brown Gallery at Art SG 2026 Singapore which took place January 22-25, 2026.

Articles of General Interest 

The Contemporary Art Galleries Association (AGAC) is pleased to announce the development of a new project, The Galleries, digital hub intended to transform the way art enthusiasts and collectors discover and experience contemporary art.

OCAD University – Celebrating Black History Month 2026

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