The Cultural Studies Department is proud to announce the winners of last year’s Gregory R. Frith Memorial Prize. The awarding of the 2019-2020 Frith Prize was unfortunately delayed due to the onset of the pandemic, but we are extremely pleased to announce that the Prize, awarded for outstanding work in the arts, will be shared by Jinian Harwig and Lindsay Olivieri.
Jinian produced a film, "HFATES" (16mm, black and white, silent), for Professor Kelly Egan’s CUST-MDST 3186H: Workshop in Experimental Film. Her goal with the film was, in her words, "to translate the physical experience of serious illness into a visual medium." In her artist statement, she writes:
We underestimate our dependence on our bodies. We like to pretend that mind over matter exists that we have some sort of control over our tenuous connection to life but we simply do not. For all the thought we put into our bodies appearance and capabilities that isn't what they are for. Our bodies are not vessels we can leave, or abstract. Our bodies keep us alive... Especially when one is sick or injured, while the emotional lived experience is immensely important it is vulnerable to the physicality of the body. The body is not an abstract concept your body, my body, my fingers typing these words whether you decide to focus on the body or not the body exists. The body is resolute. The body is your body. You are not separate from it.
The Committee was impressed by the effective, visceral qualities of the film; its gritty emotionality conveyed its thematic concerns in a way that probed the materiality of the medium.
Lindsay produced a series of drawings titled Disillusioned for Professor Kelly Egan's CUST 2511H: Workshop in Drawing. The Committee was impressed not only by the technical prowess on display, but by its conceptual heft. The drawings, concerned as they are with reproducibility, exemplify the ways in which research-creation enables critical thinking and artistic practice to inform one another.
Jinian's and Lindsay's work can be found alongside the other Frith Prize entrants on the Artwork page at https://www.trentu.ca/culturalstudies/community/artwork. The Department offers sincere congratulations to Jinian and Lindsay, and wishes them luck in their future work.
More information on the Frith and Wernick Prizes, including a list of previous recipients, can be found on our Academic Prizes page.