The winners of the 2020 Grantham Foundation for the Arts and the Environment awards are Andreas Rutkauskas and the artist duo Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens.

Creation Award — Andreas Rutkauskas

The winner of the 2020 artist residency and the accompanying 10 000 $ scholarship is Andreas Rutkauskas.

Rutkauskas teaches at the Okanagan Campus of the University of British Columbia, where he has developed a course on artistic practice and the Anthropocene. He uses photography to explore the ecological effects of forest fires, an issue he addresses in his proposal for the residency, titled After the Fire. In contrast with the usual catastrophic view presented in the media, and in light of the new climate reality, Rutkauskas favors a resilience approach in which fire as a dynamic entity is integrated into better-balanced ecosystems.

The artist residency took place in December 2020 and an exhibition will be presented at the Grantham Foundation in spring of 2021.

Research Award — Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens

The winners of the 2020 research residency and the accompanying 5000 $ scholarship are Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens.

Their project, Le monde caché sous nos pieds, proposes to explore the intensification and financialization of agriculture in Quebec and to analyze the ways in which agricultural land is understood, appropriated and managed.

In spring and summer 2020, the duo focused in particular on the revaluation of soil biodiversity, meeting with researchers and farmers.

The research residency took place in July 2020. Presented briefly in the fall of 2020 because of the pandemic, the artists’ exhibition will be rescheduled for the winter of 2021. 

Led by Johanne Lamoureux, chairholder of the Canada Research Chair in Civic Museology, the jury awarding the scholarships brought together the expertise of Sophie Bélair-Clément, artist and professor at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Jean-François Bélisle, director and chief curator of the Musée d’art de Joliette, Suzanne Paquet, director, Department of Art History and Film Studies of the Université de Montréal and Bénédicte Ramade, art historian, researcher and independent curator specializing in Anthropocene issues.