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Delhi-based artist pockets Canada’s top photography prize
City-based artist Gauri Gill has bagged this year's Grange Prize, the most prestigious contemporary photography award in Canada. She was selected by a public vote for the $50,000 award, given away by Art Gallery of Ontario and Aeroplan.
Each year, the Grange Prize associates the museum and the Canadian organisation with a partner country of the origin of two of the finalists, while the two others are local. This edition honours India, whereas in 2009 it was Mexico and in 2008, China. Nandini Valli and Canadians Elaine Stocki and Althea Thauberger were also in the fray.
In its verdict, the jury said, "Gauri Gill has recently emerged as one of India's most significant young photographers. Gill's practice is complex because it contains several seemingly discrete lines of pursuit.
These include her more than a decade long study of marginalized communities in Rajasthan, of women from different generations and their often tentative encounter with modernity". "Gill's work also addresses the twinned Indian identity markers of class and community as determinants of mobility and social behaviour. In these works there is irony, a rugged documentary spirit and a human concern over issues of survival."
