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Toronto Friends of Visual Arts

@tfva.ca

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TFVA is an independent nonprofit organization that is dedicated to educating members about visual arts and supporting visual arts in the GTA tfva.com

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🏆 Toronto Friends of The Visual Arts Announces Their Annual Awards 🏆

The Toronto Friends of The Visual Arts (TFVA) @tfva.ca announces their annual awards for 2026.

These include the Project Support Award, an award that provides support funding for visual arts activities within the Greater Toronto and Hamilton (GTHA) that demonstrates excellence, originality, creativity and artistic merit; the Artist Prize Award celebrates individuals who are early and emerging to mid career artists with exceptional vision, craft and artistic rigour, who enrich and advance the visual arts community across the GTHA. The Founders Achievement Award, acknowledges a person or group who, over time, has made an exceptional contribution to the visual arts community in the GTHA.

At a recent Tribute event, past winners, arts community members, and TFVA supporters gathered to celebrate the creativity and excellence of this year’s honourees.

🌟 Project Support Award Recipients for 2026:
The Bentway @thebentway
NAMARA Curatorial Research Residency @namara_projects
Isza Gallery @iszagallery
Magenta Foundation @magentafoundation
ArtHeart Community Art Centre @artheartto

🌟 Artist Prize Award Recipients for 2026:
Artist Prize Winner – Oluseye @olu.seye
Artist Prize Finalist – Claire Greenshaw @clairegreenshaw
Artist Prize Finalist – Christina Leslie @clesliephotography

🌟 Founders Achievement Award 2026 Recipient
Peggy Gale

Founded in 1998, The Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts (TFVA) is an independent, membership based, non-profit organization that promotes knowledge of the visual arts to its members through an extensive education program and provides support and recognition of artistic achievement to artists, arts professionals and arts organizations in Toronto and the GTA.

For more information, please visit the link in bio.

📸 Images: Caley Taylor Photography.

#TorontoArt #ArtAwards #ArtsCommunity #CanadianArtists #ContemporaryArt #VisualArtsToronto #TFVA A person wearing a pink jacket holds stapled sheets of paper. The top page reads "TFVA 2026 Tribute Honourees." by @tfva.ca

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Congratulations 🎉 to our current and past prize winners who were just nominated for the Sobey Longlist! @natgallerycan
@olu.seye TFVA 2026 🏆
@alexakumikohatanaka TFVA 2023 finalist
@nadiabelerique TFVA 2015 🏆
@lotuslkang TFVA 2015 finalist

📸 found via artist’s Instagram +
National Gallery website. taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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The Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts (TFVA) is pleased to announce this year’s Founders Achievement Award goes to Peggy Gale, whose central role spans five decades as a pioneering curator, art critic, writer, and cultural worker.
Her work has played an important role in establishing time-based and media art as a legitimate art form and have become artistic benchmarks. The 2026 Award honours Peggy Gale for her demonstrated high level of accomplishment over many years in the field of the visual arts.

Peggy Gale’s early impact on the Toronto arts scene began with Videoscape (1974) at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which was one of the first museum exhibitions to recognize video as a formal artistic practice. Her writing on art has provided important context for artists’ work in museums and galleries. She was also a regular contributor to Canadian Art and Parachute magazines. Internationally she has represented Canadian excellence in several important events and has been a long-time member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and the Writers Union of Canada. She’s been a board member of the Gershon Iskowitz Foundation since 2012 and President since 2018.
Gale has published extensively, with essays in Video By Artists (Art Metropole), Mirror Machine: Video and Identity (YYZBOOKS), Lectures obliques (Centre d’art contemporain de Basse-Normandie), and many museum catalogues. Among other titles, she was editor for Museums by Artists (with AA Bronson, Art Metropole), Video re/View: The (best) Source for Critical Writings on Canadian Artists’ Video (with Lisa Steele) and Artists Talk 1969–1977 (The Press, NSCAD). Videotexts, on narrative in artists’ video, was published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995. A selection of her essays 1974-2020 is currently in preparation with Lisa Steele as editor. Honours include the Toronto Arts Award (Visual Arts, 2000), the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2006) and Alumni of Influence, University College, University of Toronto, 2020. The Peggy Gale fonds (1963-2016) are held at the Edward P. Taylor Library & Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario.

📸 of Peggy by @manimazinani taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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Thank you @alvinluong + @mercerunion for a wonderful visit and talk today. Alvin’s commissioned show — Dephinitely Paradise — showing at Mercer Union until May 9th is his first institutional solo exhibition.
Alvin Luong is a 2023 TFVA Artist Prize recipient.
Alvin’s film + exhibition is a beautiful nuanced story about Vietnam, migration, connection and the environment. ‘Luong’s exhibition offers a space that is neither origin nor destination, where the complexity of displacement and the fullness of human experience can be held without the need for resolution.’ (Mercer Union) taken in Mercer Union, a centre for contemporary art by @tfva.ca

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The TFVA recently announced the recipients of the 2026 TFVA Artist Prize Awards.
There are 3 awards, one prize winner and two finalists. Congratulations to CHRISTINA LESLIE on receiving one of our two Finalist Awards this year! @clesliephotography

Christina Leslie, 2026 Artist Prize Finalist, is an artist living and working in the Toronto area. Her lens-based practice delves into decolonization, identity, migration, marginalization, and her West Indian heritage. Using experimental photography and text, she explores the intersections of history, memory, and race to create thought-provoking visual narratives. Her series titled Pinhole Parishes was inspired by familial stories of Jamaica’s post-independence era. The images, created through improvised photographic tools and long exposures, evoke memory and presence. In her series Sugar Coat, she seeks to address the disconnection between sugar and its history, while exploring the materiality of sugar in its bleached granular form and speaking metaphorically about the whitewashing of this history. Using her adept experimental approach, she produced these photographs made from sugar, further enhancing the depth and power of the images. In addition to her art making practice, Christina is also an independent curator who recently curated an exhibition, The Great Unseen (2025), at the McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, her first curatorial experience working with a major collection and institution.

Photo of Christina Leslie by
Kwame Delfish @kwamedelfish
Artwork by Christina Leslie:
Pinhole 11, 2025 Installation view Power Plant 2025/26.
image credit: LF Documentation @lfdocumentation

Founded in 1998, the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts is an independent, membership based, non-profit
organization that promotes knowledge of the visual arts to its members through an extensive education program, and provides support and recognition for artistic achievement to artists and art organizations in the GTA and surrounding area.
#tfva #contemporaryart #toronto #gta #torontoartists taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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The TFVA recently announced the recipients of the 2026 TFVA Artist Prize Awards.
There are 3 awards, one prize winner and two finalists. Congratulations to CLAIRE GREENSHAW on receiving one of our two Finalist Awards this year!

Claire Greenshaw, 2026 Artist Prize Finalist, is a Canadian artist based in Toronto whose practice is grounded in drawing as a way of thinking, seeing, and making sense of the world. Greenshaw is known for her command of line, tone, and observation—drawing with both precision and emotional acuity. Her works often unfold through slow, attentive mark-making, where patience and intimacy with materials allow images and sculptures to emerge gradually. Her meditative process considers drawing as an enduring analogue tool of documentation and contemplation which contrasts the increasing influence of the digital in our daily lives. Greenshaw is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of Visual Arts at York University, where her creative research takes up ideas about the circulation of images, feminist approaches to the archive, and the experience of time under capitalism and the Anthropocene. Across both drawing and sculpture, Greenshaw’s work reflects a deep respect for materials and process, revealing an artist attentive to nuance, restraint, and the expressive power of careful looking.
@mrs_woman

Photo of Claire Greenshaw by
Jonny Scott
Artwork by Claire Greenshaw:
Making In my body out of my mind, powdered graphite applied directly to the gallery wall, 2023.
image credit: Annie MacDonell @anniemacdonell

Founded in 1998, the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts is an independent, membership based, non-profit
organization that promotes knowledge of the visual arts to its members through an extensive education program, and provides support and recognition for artistic achievement to artists and art organizations in the GTA and surrounding area.
#tfva #contemporaryart #toronto #gta #torontoartists taken in Toronto Canada by @tfva.ca

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The TFVA recently announced the recipients of the 2026 TFVA Artist Prize Awards.
There are 3 awards, one prize winner and two finalists. Congratulations to OLUSEYE on receiving this year’s Artist Prize Award!

Oluseye, the 2026 Artist Prize recipient, is a Nigerian-Canadian artist based in Toronto. Using ‘diasporic debris’ — a term used to describe the artifacts collected on his trans-Atlantic travels — he traces Blackness through its multifaceted migrations and manifestations. These transformational objects are recast into sculpture, performance, and photography; invoking his personal narratives within a broader examination of Black Diasporic culture and African spiritual traditions. @olu.seye

Photo of Oluseye by Josh Rille @jjjjjjjoshua
Artwork
Title: Subject to the tide (After David Hammons), 2018-2025
Twill Flag, salvaged fence from Africville heritage site in Halifax, NS
Artwork documented by LF documentation @lfdocumentation

Founded in 1998, the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts is an independent, membership based, non-profit
organization that promotes knowledge of the visual arts to its members through an extensive education program, and provides support and recognition for artistic achievement to artists and art organizations in the GTA and surrounding area.
#tfva #contemporaryart #toronto #gta #torontoartists taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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🎉 Announcing a 2026 Project Support Award to the Magenta Foundation – June Clark: A Legacy in Photos, to support an emerging BIPOC curator to archive and digitize photographer June Clark’s vast negatives, culminating in co-curating a show at the Daniel Faria Gallery and the NIA Centre for the Arts, opening spring 2027.

June Clark: A Legacy in Photos preserves and champions the legacy of June Clark, a seminal Black Canadian female artist. Spanning over 50 years, Clark’s vast archive of black-and-white photography captures the lives of immigrant and racialized communities, Harlem’s cultural vibrancy, and her personal journey.

TFVA will fund the emerging curatorial fellow Abisola Oni, who will work with Daniel Faria from the Daniel Faria Gallery and Alicia Hall for NIA Center for the Arts in the culminating shows of this project. The curator’s responsibilities will include establishing a comprehensive research database and digitizing over 2,000 negatives and contact sheets. This project will modernize and safeguard her body of work, ensuring it remains a vital resource for scholars, artists, and the public.

Magenta Foundation is a non-profit organization and charitable arts publishing house supporting photographers and visual artists.
📸 June Clark
@magentafoundation
@dfariagallery
@abisolaoni
@niacentre taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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🎉 Announcing a Project Support Award for Namara! NAMARA Curatorial Research Residency—Material Conversions a publication led by GAS Collective.

NAMARA/projects Curators’ Studio is a privately-funded, not-for-profit venue for research, deliberation, and presentation of curatorial work. The Curatorial Residency reflects the commitment to advancing research and developing strategic resources that sit at the intersection of curation, art, and business.

Material Conversations, led by GAS Collective, will conduct artist-led community workshops in natural ink-making, paper-making, and weaving beginning in Spring 2026. TFVA will fund the resulting publication, focusing on highlights of the processes, reflections, and shared knowledge in material practices. It will enable the elevated design and expanded print run of the publication, increasing the project’s educational capacity and reach.
📸 by Sarah Bodri
@namara_projects taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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🎉 Announcing a 2026 Project Support Award for Isza Gallery ‘s @iszagallery exhibition by Elicser Elliot @elicserelliott called ‘Don’t Forget to Remember’
A new body of work exploring memory in the Caribbean. This Project Support Award will support his designated show at the gallery in July 2026.

Isza Gallery is a new gallery space at 95 King Street East, run by Toronto figurative abstract artist Elicser Elliot. His new project, Don’t Forget to Remember is a series of paintings that will explore childhood, memory, and home through a series of new portraits and landscapes done on site in St. Vincent and other Caribbean islands. taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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🎉 Announcing our 2nd 2026 Project Support Award!
TFVA is supporting Art Heart’s community Mobile Arts Program by supporting their community arts facilitators. @artheartto
ArtHeart’s mission is to bring art-making access to the Regent Park community, the site of Canada’s first and largest public housing development for children, youth, adults, seniors, and families.

The Mobile Arts Program will provide free art workshops at Daniels Spectrum, the local community cultural hub, bringing residents together and providing social cohesion. taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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🎉Announcing our first 2026 TFVA project support award! The TFVA is proud to support the @thebentway with this inaugural Gardiner Wallworks mural project. The Bentway’s mission is to reimagine the Gardiner Expressway as a new model for hybrid infrastructure and to be a leader in leveraging the power of public art. TFVA will contribute to support the maintenance of Petal and Stone, which is Toronto artist, Rebecca Munce’s mural, animating a 10,000 sq. ft. concrete exterior wall on the city’s busiest rail corridor. It is the inaugural commission of Gardiner Wallworks, in partnership with Exhibition Place. It will be in place for two years.
📸 by Mila Bright Zlatanovic
@thebentway
@rmunce taken in Toronto, Ontario by @tfva.ca

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