NSCAD is pleased to announce the nine finalists of the 2025 NSCAD Student Art Award. The award recognizes the exceptional works made by NSCAD students across nine disciplines at the university. The winning artist receives a $5,000 purchase prize, with their artwork added to a special section of NSCAD’s Permanent Collection. The remaining finalists will receive $1,000 each. This premier award provides young artists with visibility and promotion as they embark on their careers.
Student Art Award nominees will show their work at the Anna Leonowens Gallery from April 23-24. The award winner will be named on Thursday, April 24 at a gala celebration open to the public from 6 – 8 p.m.
Meet the finalists
Meet the finalists
Audrey O’Neil – Interdimensional Hunting Relics
Interdimensional Hunting Relics are two ceramic installations reminiscent of 16th and 17th century hunting trophies that some might find mounted onto walls. However, rather than usual game like deer or pheasant, O’Neil’s piece depicts otherworldly creatures and strange animals that equally fascinate and disturb viewers. These unearthly hunting trophies are displayed to create an experience of the marvels collected by an interdimensional hunter, with vivid colours and a spectrum of textures that incites curiosity. O’Neil wanted to challenge the boundaries of the ceramic medium by fusing science, technology and traditional handcrafted techniques. The result is a glimpse into an alternate dimension, with an unsettling twist on human hunting traditions.
Charlotte Perry – The Cycle
Perry draws on their experience as a queer artist to create oil paintings and drawings. Their work, The Cycle, explores the themes of mental health and their own experience dealing with psychosis as a young woman. The four-by-four-foot oil painting depicts three distorted faces in the throes of hysteria and a nude figure in the middle of a cartwheel. Perry then uses a glazing technique to create delicate wisps of blue swirling around the figures, almost like smoke or ripples of water. The painting is a visual representation of the intense feeling of mania, typically followed by a deep sorrow when someone is struggling with mental health. With this work, Perry invites viewers to have an open discussion about mental health and confront their own personal struggles. While talking about mental health can be a fearful and vulnerable experience for the sufferer, Perry reminds us that it can also be a beautiful healing experience if we don’t shy away from it.
Chris Sampson – Warning
Sampson’s large-format prints is a nod to his childhood and experience as a Labrador Inuit artist. His work, Warning, is a series of text-based prints that explores the acceptance of colonial norms through slurs and derogatory words used to describe Indigenous communities. The words are superimposed onto the surface with screen printing techniques—putting it front and center—almost as a way to confront the viewer. Sampson, who has encountered these racist words as a child and adult, recalls the powerlessness and confusion he felt in those moments. This spurred him to create an artwork that would challenge society’s passive acceptance of derogatory language, while also warning us of the impact these words can have on the receiver. By giving physical form to these words, Sampson compels us to face the truth, as there can be no reconciliation without it.
Deirdre Sokolowska – “Annie, Are You OK?”
For Sokolowska, their creative endeavors delve into the intricacies of mental illness and the lasting impacts of trauma. Their narrative thesis film, Annie, Are You OK? is inspired by their involuntary hospitalization in December 2016—an experience that consequently shaped their (mis)trust in institutional support and health care. The 14-minute film dispels the glamourization of mentally ill characters that is usually depicted in cinema and shows the raw reality of mental illness with realism and compassion. In this film, the mentally ill protagonist isn’t coddled and affirmed like you might see in movies, instead the character is forced to keep going, show up to work, and juggle their responsibilities in the aftermath of a mental breakdown. With their film, Sokolowska hopes to bring authenticity to the depiction of mental illness, while keeping their humanity intact. This film was created with the support of Megan Currie, Cole McParland, Solomon Nagler, Devon Pennick-Reilly, Sherry Brown, Ella Macdonald, Amanda Christie-Dawn, and local band Flabbo.
Grace Hirsch – I See You
I See You is a collection of sculptures that symbolizes the processing of impossible information. The series of works capture the week Hirsch spent waiting in the cardiac intensive care unit of the QEII Halifax Infirmary, where a family member passed away. Surrounded by the hospital equipment in the ICU, she was inspired to use items like gauze, syringes, and PVC tubing to create sculptures that playfully showcases objects from an otherwise sterile environment. Hirsch approaches each sculpture with a process-oriented lens as she invokes her own interpretation and reinterpretation of the environment, medical tools, machines and equipment that she did not fully understand. She wanted to push the boundaries of medical supplies from something still and stagnant to something light and full of playfulness. These sculptures act as an outlet for Hirsch and a way to honour her own method of recollection and processing information. She invites viewers to see her work with the same curiosity and bewilderment that she saw in the hospital.
Jessica Li – Boundless
Dreams have always been Li’s primary source of inspiration, especially those involving animals. Her jewellery collection, Boundless, explores how unconscious desires manifest in dreams and how societal norms impose fixed identities and rigid boundaries upon individuals. Influenced by Deleuze’s concept of “becoming-animal,” Li uses hollowware and enameling techniques to create a necklace and two brooches that examine the blurred boundaries between humans and animals from three perspectives: imagery, sensation, and thought. The necklace depicts a fierce tiger, not as a predator, but as a guardian shielding a girl who longs to escape the gaze of the outside world. The two brooches are more interactive; one is a music box, and the other is a fishing toy, both illustrating how, in dreams, an animal identity can experience human sensations and cognition. Li focuses on dialogue with the materials, sensing their innate vitality, and harmonizing herself with their natural properties. She believes each material has its own “Dao,” and through interacting with them, the works gain spiritual depth, reflecting the Daoist pursuit of natural balance and inner harmony.
Melissa Naef – Tailings
Originally from Dawson City, Yukon, artist and photographer, Naef wanted to use her childhood home and community as a primary influence of her work. She created Tailings, a collection of photographs documenting a “lifetime number of summers” in the Klondike Region. Through a mix of images on black and white, and colour film, Naef captures snippets of everyday life in the city; from the night life, to diverse characters, rust and rolling fields, all are immortalized against the characteristic backdrop of Dawson City’s architecture. Naef’s snapshot-like documentary 35mm imagery accompanied formal medium-format stillness to highlight the daily, versus the more manicured version of place. The photos are then printed on semi-transparent recycled paper and bound together with an open-spine Swiss binding method to complete the book. Viewers are treated to 86 pages of memories, experiences and places that are “quintessential Dawson.” For Naef, Tailings is a personal love letter to home and an ode to the triumphs, defeats and daily rhythms of Northern life.
Oscar Jarsky – To Be Held
What could have been a claustrophobic experience for others turned into a moment of artistic creativity for Jarsky. To Be Held is an interactive, suspended woven structure that is inspired by his trip to Kejimkujik National Park. In the thicket of the forest, Jarsky found a hollow tree with an opening at the base; intrigued by its unique structure, he decided to crawl into the hollowed space and stand within it. He compares the tight space to the feeling of being held, comforted and protected, almost as if he was being embraced by the tree. Jarksy wanted to share this experience with others and created To Be Held as a result. He uses worsted wool and double-weave techniques to mimic the tree trunk and adds a parabolic mirror at the top of the eight-feet-tall structure to give it depth. Viewers are invited to climb into the structure, look up into the mirror and reflect on their place in nature and within themselves. As an artist that is constantly inspired by nature, Jarsky hopes to spark curiosity within the viewer and give them a new perspective on humanity’s interaction with the land.
Yuting Song – Here Lies a Cosmos of Everlasting Tales
Song creates captivating ink and wash artworks using traditional Chinese brush and ink techniques to reflect her observations and contemporary concepts of female individuality. Her untitled series of works includes two drawings titled: As You Leave, You Come Closer and Here Lies a Cosmos of Everlasting Tales. The drawings are inspired by the concept of “home” as a culture and as a history. Her work also explores the role of women within the home as creators and the power they hold. Using bold, thick brush strokes, As You Leave, You Come Closer depicts a goddess in all her strength and qualities, inspired by Chinese literature and iconography. The second piece, Here Lies a Cosmos of Everlasting Tales, is inspired by the famous Paleolithic female figurine, “Venus von Willendorf.” Song describes her creations as dialogue on paper, almost like catching up with an old friend. The paper speaks to Song and she responds in kind with brush strokes and patience, discovering surprises and new imagery with each layer of ink.
The Student Art Award is part of MAYHEM, NSCAD University’s year-end Spring festival and student showcase. Student Art Award nominees will show their work at the Anna Leonowens Gallery from April 23-24. The award winner will be named on Thursday, April 24 at a gala celebration open to the public from 6 – 8 p.m.
Visit the MAYHEM webpage for the full schedule of shows and events.