Tim Whiten is the recipient of the 2023 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Artistic Achievement Award!!
The Canada Council for the Arts celebrates the exceptional careers of artists from Canada with the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts (GGArts). These awards represent the most prestigious distinctions for artistic merit and outstanding contribution to the visual and media arts in Canada.
“Rather than produce discrete, passive artworks for aesthetic contemplation, [Tim] creates cultural objects that can dynamically engage audiences in processes of self-reflection and self-awareness.”
Tim Whiten is an image maker and creator of cultural objects. Professor Emeritus at York University, he perceives expressions of being in the world as markers in a series of passages, while considering mortality itself as threshold. ln over 50 years of exhibiting work, he has sought to navigate the territory of the human condition and its transformative potential. His long-time use of human and animal remains reference the physical, while other natural materials connect the body to the world through ritual. His work is held in many collections, namely the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the de Young Museum and the Legion of Honor, in San Francisco. He is the 2022 recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize from the AGO and was a finalist for the Government of Ontario’s Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. As professor of fine art at York University since 1968, he has been instrumental in influencing generations of aspiring artists. Tim Whiten lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Read the full announcement on the CADAC website here: https://en.ggarts.ca/tim-whiten