Howie Tsui & Crystal Mowry Receive The Hnatyshyn Foundation’s 2026 Mid-Career Awards

Howie Tsui, The Banquet (2023). Courtesy of Howie Tsui and Hanart TZ Gallery.

The Hnatyshyn Foundation is thrilled to announce that Howie Tsui and Crystal Mowry are the laureates of the 2026 Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts and Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence.

Since 2006, The Hnatyshyn Foundation has honoured the exceptional achievements of Canadian artists and curators through its annual Mid-Career Awards for Excellence in Visual arts and for Curatorial Excellence, valued respectively at $30,000 (formerly $25,000) and $20,000 (formerly $15,000). These awards recognize professionals who have demonstrated excellence and innovation in their bodies of work and who show promise of outstanding artistic or curatorial achievement in the years ahead.

Tsui and Mowry were chosen by selection committees composed of experts in contemporary art from across Canada. Both were identified as forging unique paths with their careers: Tsui, through his creative use of technology and historical materials in his art-making, and Mowry, through her exemplary human-centred approach to curation. Without a doubt, the Canadian arts landscape is richer as a result of their work, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation is pleased to honour their contributions.

About the Laureates

Howie Tsui pictured with his work Retainers of Anarchy (2017), on display as part of the Outlaw exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photo © Art Gallery of New South Wales, Felicity Jenkins. Courtesy of Howie Tsui.

Howie Tsui
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts

Howie Tsui (徐浩恩, b. Hong Kong) is an interdisciplinary artist based on unceded Coast Salish territories. His practice spans ink brush painting, interactive sound sculpture, lenticular light box, and installation. Tsui constructs tense, fictive environments that gleefully deflate revered art forms and narrative genres, often stemming from the Chinese literati tradition. He employs a stylized form of derisive and exaggerated imagery as a way to satirize and disarm the homogenizing agendas of broadening regimes. The most notable branch of his practice involves the use of algorithmic animation sequences to raise questions around order and chaos and the potential of social harmony through self-organized societies. Tsui synthesizes diverging socio-cultural anxieties around superstition, surveillance, and the “abject other” through a wry outsider sensibility—casting light onto the contradictions of diasporic life.

Members of the selection committee stressed their admiration for Tsui’s visually-innovative multi-media practice that creatively combines historical references, contemporary technology, humour, and a commitment to world-building. The Foundation looks forward to following how this well-deserved award will fuel his continued artistic exploration.

Website: Howie Tsui

Selection Committee

Corrie Jackson – RBC Senior Curator | Joy Xiang – Editor, C Magazine | Catherine Sinclair – Director, Exhibitions and Collections Care, National Gallery of Canada | Richard Hill – Smith Jarislowsky Senior Curator of Canadian Art, Vancouver Art Gallery | Elliott Ramsey – Curator, The Polygon Gallery

Crystal Mowry. Photo: Carey Shaw. Courtesy of Crystal Mowry.

Crystal Mowry
The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence

Crystal Mowry is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collection, and publishing activities for over a decade. Her solo projects with artists Deanna Bowen, Maggie Groat, and Ernest Daetwyler have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries. She is a recipient of a Waterloo Region Arts Award (2020) and has been shortlisted for the Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence (2024, 2025). She has written texts for various artist-focused books on the work of Brendan Fernandes, August Klintberg, Shary Boyle, and others. Originally from Tkaronto (Toronto), Mowry is currently based in Treaty 4 (Regina), where she lives with her family.

The selection committee was moved by Mowry’s sincere commitment to the artists and communities at the centre of her work, both in her institutional roles at the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, and as an independent curator. The committee noted her care, generosity, wisdom, and professionalism, and was unanimous in the view that this award was a timely recognition of her work.

“Crystal Mowry is brilliant and courageous. She builds deep worlds. I love her description of a curator as a co-conspirator and translator—she works alongside, never above. Her work is steeped in care, humility, and curiosity, always with artists at the centre. […] She sets a high standard of professionalism, accountability, commitment, and rigour. She may be at the mid-point of her career, but I think of her as an elder in our field, and it is an honour to observe and learn from her work,” shared juror Sandra Dyck.

Selection Committee

Séamus Gallagher – Artist and laureate of a 2024 Hnatyshyn Foundation William and Meredith Saunderson Prize for Emerging Artists | Dr. Léuli Eshrāghi (Tagata Sāmoa) – Artist and Curator of Indigenous Practices, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal | Michèle Pearson Clarke – Artist and Assistant Professor of Photography, Toronto Metropolitan University | Sandra Dyck – Executive Director, The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford, BC | Karen Tam – Artist shortlisted for the 2025 Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Excellence in Visual Arts and Adjunct Curator, Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver

Learn more about the Mid-Career Awards, including the selection process, shortlists, longlists, and former laureates.

About the Hnatyshyn Foundation

The Hnatyshyn Foundation is a private charity established by the late Right Honourable Ramon John Hnatyshyn, Canada’s twenty-fourth Governor General, to assist emerging and established artists in all disciplines with their schooling, training and career development. The Foundation’s office is located in Ottawa, on the traditional unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Pour lire ce contenu en français, visitez le site web de la Fondation Hnatyshyn.

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