2019 University of Toronto Shelley Peterson Student Art Exhibition

The University of Toronto Shelley Peterson Student Art Exhibition is an annual exhibition celebrating the diverse artistic excellence of visual studies undergraduate students from all three campuses. The selected works best represent contemporary art practices with a self-reflexive consideration. The nineteen emerging artists rethink conceptual and material boundaries through risk-taking and playfulness of form. The exhibition considers themes of surveillance, cultural construction, and fantasy.

The exhibition is curated by Laetitia Dandavino-Tardif, Kesang Nanglu, and Melina Mehr as part of their Master of Museum Studies’ Exhibition Project at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.

2019 Prize Winners:
Sarah Pereux
Jiaqi Yuan
Thắng Vũ

2019 Prize Juror Nahed Mansour’s Comments:

Sarah Pereux’s detailed black and white drawings The Beaver (Sal) and The Canada Goose demonstrate high technical skills with beautifully balanced compositions. Pereux’s grotesque re-imagination of two of Canada’s most iconic animals successfully evokes histories of settler-colonial genocide and environmental destruction.

The found Chinese rattle drum in Jiaqi Yuan’s Futuristic Toy evokes playful movement and cultural specificity. By undermining the familiar object with the cold machinery that controls it, Yuan provides an acute critique of our increasingly automated world.

Thắng Vũ’s triptych Who Cares documents his performance critiquing the economies upholding the art market. The work stands out in its ability to simultaneously contextualize the performance and showcase Vu’s aesthetic and conceptual experimentation across mediums.