NSCAD University is excited to announce the nine finalists of the 2026 NSCAD Student Art Award. This premier 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.
Student Art Award nominees will show their work at the Anna Leonowens Gallery from April 21 – 25. The award winner will be named on Thursday, April 23, at a gala celebration open to the public at 6:30 p.m.
Meet the finalists
Meet the finalists
Textiles: Abby Spooner – Queen NeNe I
Queen NeNe I is part of a larger body of work—titled, Cohen’s Crown Jewels—a series of crocheted tapestries depicting historical monarchs, with the faces of the women of The Real Housewives franchise superimposed over their body. In this work, NeNe Leakes, of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, is rendered in the likeness of Queen Elizabeth I, from her 17th-century coronation portrait. Blending satire with art history, Spooner examines identity, celebrity culture, and parasocial relationships through the centuries. By framing historical rulers as early celebrities and the Housewives as modern monarchs, Spooner highlights the performative nature of these highly visible roles, and the double-edged sword of power and influence within their respective eras. Through tapestry, Spooner mirrors the pixelated world of television, underscoring how images, authority, and cultural influence are constructed and consumed across time.
SCULPTURE: Bianca McDonald – give'r the teeth
give’r the teeth is a decommissioned gas-powered chainsaw, with composite resin replicas of human teeth in place of each of the saw’s cutting teeth. Embedded into the gallery wall, the saw juts outward mid-motion, surrounded by scattered drywall debris—an image that is simultaneously violent, and strangely intimate. By replacing the teeth, McDonald transforms the saw from a tool of destruction, into a conduit for self-reflection. Rooted in her experience growing up in a rural space, McDonald interrogates how labour, gender, and place shape the self. As a site-specific installation, give’r the teeth blur the lines between art and labour, rural and urban, tool and body—sparking discussion about the importance of rural experiences within contemporary art spaces.
JEWELRY: Kai Shen – ARC
CERAMICS: Liam Miron – Free Real Estate
Free Real Estate is a large-scale ceramic sculpture that transforms an everyday object into an instrument for reflection, movement, and the passage of time. Drawing from her upbringing, moving between homes, and experience of loss at a young age, Miron reimagines the house-box—a familiar real estate newspaper dispenser—as a symbol of displacement and nostalgia. Standing five feet tall, the piece frames an oil painting of a weathered truck slowly being reclaimed by nature. Ladybugs crawl across the sun-faded surface, introducing a sense of whimsy and childhood familiarity, while reinforcing themes of decay and transformation. For Miron, these elements reflect an ongoing dialogue between human-made environments and nature’s inevitability, and how ownership, permanence, and “home” are ultimately transient concepts.
PRINTMAKING: Mary-Sue Scratch – Journey through a Burning Brain
Journey through a Burning Brain is a triptych that transforms the inner workings of the mind into a vivid, immersive landscape. Created through a combination of transfer dye and screen printing on textile, the work is stretched over canvas supports, pushing beyond the traditional flatness of printmaking into something multi-dimensional. Across the three panels, a small girl moves through a fantastical world—wandering through a forest, jumping beneath a rainbow storm cloud, and finally emerging into sunlight. This character, imagined by Scratch in childhood, becomes a guide through an interior journey, embodying the artist’s long-standing interest in what exists within the body and mind. By allowing the imagery to wrap around the edges of the stretcher, Journey through a Burning Brain becomes not just something to look at, but a world to explore and lose yourself in.
DRAWING: Myles West - Was & Am, Am & Was
Was & Am, Am & Was is a charcoal self-portrait that explores the fluid relationship between identity, childhood, and the body. Through the juxtaposition of two figures, himself as a young child and as he is now, West reflects on the intersections of gender, personal history, and self-perception—presenting identity as something continuously unfolding. Developed through a process of layering and reductive drawing, the work builds from a soft charcoal ground, with forms emerging through addition and erasure. Rather than separating past and present, West allows them to exist simultaneously, each version of the self informing and reshaping the other. The result is an image that feels both intimate and in flux, capturing the emotional complexity of growth and self-recognition. West invites viewers to consider their own relationship to their bodies and identities, emphasizing that who we are is not a replacement of what came before, but an accumulation of lived experience.
PAINTING: Petra Bouwers - Out to Pasture
Out to Pasture is a large-scale painting that reflects home, displacement, and the shifting relationship between land and identity. Combining oil glazing techniques and acrylic washes, Bouwers layers a vivid pink abstraction over a carefully rendered image of her childhood dairy farm, gradually dissolving the landscape into an uncertain, fluid space. Rooted in Bouwers’ experience of losing her family farm due to urban development, the painting navigates complex emotions of nostalgia, loss, and acceptance. Cows drift through the composition, becoming unmoored as they move toward abstraction, mirroring the artist’s own sense of dislocation. By contrasting synthetic acrylic with traditional oil painting, Out to Pasture captures the feeling of watching something familiar slip away, while questioning what it means to belong.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Tovah Williams - Mnikwaqnik (After the Wildfire)
Mnikwaqnik is a striking black-and-white giclée landscape print that documents the aftermath of the 2025 wildfire in the Birch Cove Lakes Wilderness Area. Using a combination of digital and large-format photography, Williams travelled on-site to capture the decimated tree line. The result is four gelatin silver contact prints—which were then inverted, printed, and reassembled to form a seamless, haunting panorama. The piece transforms a once lively vista into a dystopian landscape, drawing awareness to the increasing frequency of wildfires, and human impact on the natural world. By layering and stitching the images, Williams emphasizes the textures, contrasts, and lingering presence of the affected wilderness, inviting viewers to witness a space caught between devastation and regeneration.
FILM: Wanjiru Njoroge – “Usikimye”
“Usikimye” (Swahili for “Don’t Be Silent”) is a bold experimental short film that explores the fears, constraints, and resilience of womanhood. Shot on 16mm Bolex, the film confronts gendered violence and the subjugation of women through imposed silence. Through a series of abstract images—breast, breath and gold—the work captures the constant negotiation between vulnerability and power, safety and visibility. Njoroge’s non-linear approach allows viewers to inhabit the emotional and psychological landscapes of growing up female, highlighting the vigilance and strategies women employ to survive. “Usikimye” is both a personal and universal reflection on fear, resilience, and the courage to speak out. Through the film, Njoroge creates a space where curiosity, empathy, and recognition intersect, and where silence is replaced by witness.
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 21 – 25. The award winner will be named on Thursday, April 23, at a gala celebration open to the public at 6:30 p.m.
Visit the MAYHEM webpage for the full schedule of shows and events.