Middlebrook Prize awarded to Holly Chang

The Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG) is pleased to announce that Holly Chang has been awarded the 2023 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. Her proposed exhibition, The Third Scenario, has been selected as the winning submission to be presented at the Art Gallery of Guelph from September 14 – December 29, 2023. This year’s Middlebrook Prize jury was composed of Musha Neluheni (Artist and Independent Curator), Tamara Toledo (Director/Curator, Sur Gallery), and Allison Yearwood (Executive Director, Plug In ICA).

Created in 2012, the annual prize is awarded to a Canadian curator or curatorial team under 30 with the goal to support a resilient, sustainable, and inclusive arts sector in Canada. “The Middlebrook Prize is an excellent opportunity for emerging curatorial voices to produce a valuable show that will undoubtedly become a notable accomplishment in their future and a platform nationally to engage with broader audiences. A pleasure to review such dynamic and thoughtful applications,” notes 2023 panelist Allison Yearwood.

The Middlebrook Prize also builds awareness of the vital role of artistic expression in an era of ongoing and unprecedented economic, political, environmental, and social upheaval. “Holly Chang presents an intriguing, nuanced approach from a young curator that seeks to engage with the community through not only the exhibition, but inventive public programming,” notes juror Musha Neluheni. “With the strengths of maintaining focus on accessibility and a socially driven narrative, Chang’s exhibition gives insight into the Asian diaspora within the Canadian cultural context.” Juror Tamara Toledo echoes, “Her curatorial premise of radically rethinking how to reconceptualize power dynamics pushes boundaries and critically frames new ways of thinking about racialized hyphenated bodies.”

Curator Biography

Holly Chang is an artist and curator based in Toronto/Tkaronto who has recently completed her MA in Communication and Culture at TMU/York University. Chang – as a second-generation Chinese Canadian – maintains cultural ties with her cross-cultural identity and draws on her hybrid background for inspiration. Chang makes use of a variety of media including textiles, photography and natural dyeing. She recently exhibited her work in her first solo show with Gallery 44 in April 2022 and participated in the Banff Artist in Residence program in Spring 2022.

2023 Jurors

Musha Neluheni is an artist and curator from Johannesburg, South Africa. She held the position of Contemporary Curator and Acting Chief Curator at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. She was co-curator of the South African Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale. She served on the Standard Bank Art Committee and the Theme Panel for the South African Mint. Her exhibition There is Only Light, and Shadow won best curated show at the 2016 Turbine Art Fair. She holds a BFA from Rhodes University and has written for several publications including the online forum The Archival Platform.

Tamara Toledo is a Chilean-born, Toronto-based curator, artist, writer, and PhD candidate at York University. Her research focuses on hemispheric connections, decolonial methodologies, diasporic exhibition histories, and the legacies of the Cold war era in contemporary art. Her essays, reviews, and exhibition texts can be found in various publications including ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal of the University of California. Toledo has worked in collections, research, programming, and curatorial research roles at A Space Gallery, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Art Gallery of Ontario. She has shared her research through public talks, exhibition tours, guest lectures, panels, symposiums, and conferences held in multiple venues and institutions across Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Toledo is co-founder of the Allende Arts Festival and of the nonprofit arts organization Latin American Canadian Art Projects. She is currently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery, the only space dedicated to contemporary Latin American art in Canada.

An alumna of the University of Winnipeg with a political science and business administration degree, Allison Yearwood is the Executive Director of Plug-In ICA in Winnipeg. She returned to her hometown from the Banff Centre, where she was Program Manager in the Indigenous Arts Department. Previously, Yearwood served as Art and Business Manager at Yamaji Art, an Aboriginal art centre in Australia, and was the General Manager of Collective of Black Artists in Toronto. She was also the Programming and Events Coordinator at the Northern Life Museum & Cultural Centre in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and was the first non-Indigenous staff member at Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg. Yearwood advocates for racialized and disenfranchised groups to decolonize institutions of power from the ground up. She is exceptionally skilled in equity issues and a powerful and transformative voice for anti-racism action. Having served as the Program Manager for digital art residencies at Banff Centre she is a proponent of equity justice in media and digital production. Yearwood’s institutional critique articulates the creation of safe spaces for underserved communities within the institution. She currently is the Board Chair of aceartinc., serves as a member at large for Spiderwebshow Theatre, and is a member of the Equity Committee for CAMDO.

About the Middlebrook Prize

Founded in 2012, the Middlebrook Prize is a national prize awarded annually to foster social innovation and curatorial excellence in Canada while encouraging creative inquiry and public engagement. Selected by jury of arts professionals, each winner is a curator or curatorial team under 30 who receives an honorarium as well as curatorial mentorship in the development of an exhibition. The Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators is made possible through the support of the Centre Wellington Community Foundation Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, the Guelph Community Foundation Musagetes Fund, and through private donations. For more information about the Middlebrook Prize and the cohort of past winners, please visit middlebrookprize.ca.

Media contact:
Nicole Neufeld, Community Engagement Coordinator
nneufeld@artgalleryofguelph.ca | 519-837-0010 x 2

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