Vanier students win 2023-2024 Art Acquisition and Photography Scholarships

Created in winter 2017, the Vanier College Foundation Art Acquisition Scholarship aims to promote student success and provide a concrete opportunity for Vanier’s aspiring student artists to receive recognition for their work both in monetary terms as well as in exposure at the College. This $3,000 annual scholarship, which is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Vanier College Foundation, will hopefully encourage students to pursue their artistic passions while the College will benefit from amassing a bank of art work that can be displayed throughout the Vanier campus that will help showcase the talents of students in disciplines such as photography, sculpture, drawing and painting.

Winners of the Vanier College Foundation Art Acquisition Scholarship

• Victoria Wilson, (Prize: $1150), "Harvest", graphite on Fabriano paper. The goal of "Harvest" was to demonstrate and bring attention to the ethical treatment of animals in the meat and cattle industry; by using shocking formal elements that bring the viewers eye to the piece and directly confronting them with our current reality.
• Jackie Baroud, (Prize: $750), "End of Beginning", graphite on paper. This work consists of two graphite drawings exploring ambiguity of narrative through hyper-realism and cinema.
• Abanob Samy Sedrak, (Prize: $450), "The Fading Picture". This documentary film explores the way memories are created and destroyed over time.
• Amélia Chaïb, (Prize: $450), Series: "I Had to Creep Over Him Every Time", photography/ digital art. These images depict ways in which sickness was represented amongst women and the way they have internalized and romanticized it, sometimes to the point of it becoming fatal.
• Yasmine Yassine, (Prize: $200), "Makhour", ceramic, gold leaves. Makhour is an uneasy feeling, “what you get when you mix sadness with anger, disappointment, and pain. What essentially started as a cry for help, ended up being an homage to my grandmother and a cathartic exercise.”

Winners of the Peter Gonda Memorial Scholarship for Photography

The Peter Gonda Memorial Scholarship for Photography, valued at $600, is awarded annually to any Vanier College student who demonstrates original photographic works. Peter Gonda passed away on August 20th 2016 at the age of 47. He was a Montreal-based artist, novelist and screenwriter. One of his main passions was photography. He travelled around the world and exhibited his photographs in London, Paris and Montreal. This year’s winners are:

• 1st Prize $300, Aminata Ndoye, Series: "Suspended Youth". This series of photographs is about how kids are expressing a growing disinterest in their own childhood, while chasing light similar to digital devices commonly used.
• 2nd Prize $200, Santino Malacria, "Circular Contemplation" and "Through the Window".
• 3rd Prize $100, Soraya Tyree, "The Happening". “My photo series conveys the theme of “the happening” by showing subtle events (dominoes falling, a swing in the air, a rock hitting the water after being thrown in a lake, someone drawing with watercolor brush pens) while they are in the middle of happening.”

Congratulations to all these talented students.