Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss win 2024 VIVA Awards
Both artists recognized for addressing land, politics, and economies
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, installation view of Haka Thriller (2019), part of the exhibition Li iyá:qtset – We Transform It at The Reach Gallery Museum. Courtesy of the artist.
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, detail view of Language Shoes, part of The Spider Plays (2024) at Cooper Cole Gallery. Courtesy of the gallery and the artist.
THE JACK AND DORIS Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts has announced Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss as the winners of the 2024 VIVA Awards.
Each artist will receive $15,000 in an awards ceremony at Emily Carr University on March 26—the first in-person VIVA Awards celebration since 2019. Recipients of the two most recent Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize, Daina Augaitis and Makiko Hara, will also be honoured at the event; that award recognizes excellence in the field of curation.
L’Hirondelle Hill is an artist and writer who draws on the history of found materials to explore concepts of land, property, and alternative economies. Her work often addresses capitalism and its vulnerabilities, using readily sourced materials to consider private property, exchange, and black-market economies. Her installations often span several forms: The Spider Plays included multipage works on paper, layered in ink and collage with text, as well as sculptural elements that allowed visitors to imagine the spiders’ world at a human scale. A member of the Indigenous artist collective BUSH gallery, Hill prioritizes land-based teachings and Indigenous epistemologies. She holds an MFA from the California College of the Arts and degrees from SFU. Her work has been exhibited at institutions including MoMA, the Venice Biennale, and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill. Photo by Aaron Leon
T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss. Photo by Mavreen David
Wyss is a Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Sto:lo, Hawaiian, and Swiss interdisciplinary artist, educator, and Indigenous ethnobotanist. Over 30 years, her work has encompassed storytelling and collaborative initiatives centered on Indigenous plant knowledge and natural space restoration. Pieces have included urban Indigenous gardens and a short digital work entitled “Haka Thriller” that was projected onto a weaving of a shawl that responded to Taiko Waititi’s film Boy. Recognized for sharing traditional knowledge through various mediums, including digital media and weaving, Wyss has exhibited at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and elsewhere. She was a recipient of the 2010 Mayor’s Arts Award and has held residencies with Griffin Art Projects and the Vancouver Public Library. In 2022, Wyss received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Emily Carr University.
“The jury was unanimous in their support for Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss as the 2024 VIVA Awards recipients,” Melanie O’Brian, associate director and curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC and chair of the Shadbolt Foundation said in the announcement today. “We acknowledge these two artists’ outstanding contributions as committed and visible members in the local, regional, and national art communities. The jury additionally noted that both artists’ practices address land, politics, and economies in significant material processes.”
The VIVA Awards, established in 1988 by Jack and Doris Shadbolt, are annual prizes awarded to mid-career B.C. visual artists. The 2024 jury consisted of Sean Alward, Charles Campbell, Laiwan, Hazel Meyer, and Samuel Roy-Bois. 
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