The National Gallery of Canada has announced the six finalists for the 2026 Sobey Art Award, the annual prize that recognizes artists from six regions across Canada: Circumpolar, Pacific, Prairies, Ontario, Quebec and Atlantic. This year’s shortlist is made up of Melaw Nakehk’o, Samuel Roy-Bois, Audie Murray, Lotus L. Kang, Caroline Monnet and Shane Perley-Dutcher. Works by each of the artists will be presented in the 2026 Sobey Art Award exhibition beginning in September, with the winner to be announced in November.
Funded by the Sobey Art Foundation and organized by the National Gallery of Canada, the award was founded in 2002 and is selected from a longlist of 30 nominees. Past winners include Ursula Johnson, Nadia Myre, Abbas Akhavan, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory and Tania Willard. In a statement accompanying the shortlist, Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director of Curatorial Initiatives and chair of the 2026 Sobey Award jury, described the finalists as representing “a dynamic cross-section of contemporary visual practice,” noting that their artworks are shaped by “deep personal, cultural and material histories and experience.”
Melaw Nakehk’o, the Circumpolar finalist, is a multidisciplinary Dene/Denesułińe artist and educator based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The National Gallery describes her practice as encompassing soft sculptures sewn with caribou and moose hide, painting, documentary films, installations and digital art, with a focus on the revival and reclamation of traditional Dene knowledge. The profile highlights moosehide tanning as one of the skills she teaches in community settings, and frames memory, land-based pedagogy and intergenerational learning as central to her work.
Samuel Roy-Bois, representing the Pacific region, works across site-specific sculpture, photography, performance and installation. According to the Gallery, his sculptures and images often combine manufactured objects with vernacular forms and materials, drawing attention to the conditions that shape how viewers understand place. The profile also notes his role as Associate Professor of Sculpture at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, where he directs the Research Studio for Spaces and Things. Audie Murray, the Prairies finalist, is based in Regina and is a member of Flying Dust First Nation. Her work brings together glass beads, repurposed textiles and charcoal remnants from smudging sage, tobacco and sweetgrass, and the Gallery says her practice explores contemporary Indigenous memory, defiance and care through process-driven, layered forms.
The Ontario finalist, Lotus L. Kang, works with photography, sculpture and moving image, often leaving photographic emulsion unfixed so that it remains continually sensitive. The Gallery’s profile emphasizes the permeability of her installations, in which tanned forms hang among architectural structures and cast sculptures in ways that respond to light and moisture. Caroline Monnet, the Quebec finalist, is based in Montreal and works across film, photography, sculpture and textiles. Her practice engages with history, language and contemporary Indigenous experience, including material choices linked to construction and to conversations around the housing crisis among Indigenous communities.
Shane Perley-Dutcher, the Atlantic finalist, is a Wolastoqey visual artist and metalsmith from Wolastoqiyik Neqotkuk in New Brunswick. The Gallery says he transforms Wabanaki ash basketry traditions through mixed-media woven basket sculptures and jewellery, using soft metals alongside birch, cedar, spruce and ash. The 2026 Sobey Art Award exhibition will be on view at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa from September 4, 2026 to January 3, 2027.
