MONTREAL, June 22, 2020 /CNW Telbec/ – Heidi Barkun, master’s candidate in visual and media arts at UQAM, and Mara Eagle, MFA student at Concordia University, are the recipients of the prestigious Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art.
The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowships in Contemporary Art, each worth $60,000 over two years, provide the laureates with recognition and the support they need to refine their work and further their creative research at a turning point in their career paths, when they move out of academia and into the professional community. Each year, the fellowships are awarded to two students enrolled in a Master’s or PhD program in the media arts or visual arts programs at UQAM’s Faculty of Arts and Concordia University’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
A new website dedicated to artists This year, the presentation of the fellowships coincided with the launch of a new website dedicated to all the recipients. The bilingual site presents the work of the 22 artists who have won these coveted fellowships since 2010. UQAM and Concordia University are partners of the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation in this initiative.
The 2020 laureates
Heidi Barkun “It is a huge honour to be one of the Quebec artists who have received support from the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art over the last decade. In this time of great global uncertainty, I would like to express my gratitude for the artistic recognition and the financial stability this fellowship provides,” said laureate Heidi Barkun.
“I want to thank my research supervisor, Michael Blum, who has helped me grow over the course of my master’s at UQAM, the Institut des recherches et d’études féministes for having broadened my theoretical horizons, all the professors and technicians who guided me along the way, and the 27 participants in the project LET’S GET YOU PREGNANT! for their courage and openness to sharing. My master’s research explores the experience of failed in-vitro fertilization in a pronatalist society. With the support of the Bronfman Fellowship, I will be able to continue my process of engaged art that highlights other experiences that we hear little about,” Barkun added. https://www.boursesbronfman.org/heidi-barkun
Mara Eagle “I’m thrilled to be able to keep working at Concordia’s facilities with my favourite technicians. I had an amazing experience doing my MFA at Concordia, but it went by too quickly. In a sense, this program is helping me press the reset button. It’s an honour and an enormous privilege to receive this award—I couldn’t be more excited and grateful,” declared Mara Eagle.
“With the support of the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman fellowship program, I intend to create an immersive exhibit on the intersection of biotechnology, monsters and speculative design. Combining video, sculpture and installation, I will produce a new set of works that explore the ways philosophy and western science have formulated a concept of nature that is subjugated to industrialization, exploitation and colonialism. In my view, re-evaluating the philosophical foundations of the concept of nature, which, in many ways, structures discourse on conservation, activism and political and economic reform, is essential for planting the roots of a more sustainable and equitable future,” Eagle explained. https://www.boursesbronfman.org/mara-eagle
Renewal of the program With the renewal of the Bronfman fellowships, students from both these leading fine arts institutions in Quebec know they can count on support from the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation to dedicate themselves to the career path of their choice.
“Stephen and Claudine Bronfman know what this transition means for our graduating students, especially in the current context of instability. The grant and mentorship program they offer has allowed us to create a professionalization support platform unlike any other in Canada,” noted Rebecca Duclos, dean of Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
“The renewed agreement with the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation makes it possible, for the eleventh year in a row, to provide financial support to an emerging artist. Thanks to the Bronfmans’ great generosity, artists like Heidi Barkun can pursue their practice and begin the transition to the professional community under very favourable conditions,” declared Joanne Lalonde, interim dean of UQAM’s Faculty of Fine Arts.
“The new website promoting all the laureates of the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Fellowship in Contemporary Art will also help provide exposure for the artists’ work,” added Lalonde.
Previous winners 22 exceptional artists have received the fellowships to date. The previous fellows are:
About the Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation The Claudine and Stephen Bronfman Family Foundation is a charitable organization that strives to create and innovate locally, nationally and internationally with a strong focus on Montreal.
SOURCE Université du Québec à Montréal
For further information: Julie Meunier, Press Relations Officer, Press Relations and Special Events Division, Communications Service, UQAM, Tel.: 514-895-0134, [email protected]
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
