Burnaby's Karen Zalamea wins the 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award out of Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity

The local artist explores issues of identity, culture, and memory through photography

BURNABY-BASED ARTIST, educator, and cultural worker Karen Zalamea has won the 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award out of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

The photography prize, formerly biennial, is now given annually to any mid-career Canadian artist advancing the field of contemporary photography. It comes with a fully funded four-week residency at Banff Centre’s Leighton Artist Studios, worth more than $7,000.

Born in Vancouver, Zalamea uses photography to explore issues of identity, culture, and memory.

Karen Zalamea, *Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas)* (series), 2024–ongoing. Cyanotype on watercolour paper. Photo courtesy the artist

Zalamea intends to use the time and resources provided at Banff Centre to pursue cyanotypes—a camera-less technique that results in the negative of an object placed directly on a light-sensitive substrate under daylight, named after the cyan colour of the exposed areas. According to a release, Zalamea’s cyanotypes created at Banff Centre, part of her ongoing series Herbarium (after Flora de Filipinas), explore “the history of Spanish colonial botany in the Philippines, investigating how plant life is enmeshed with identity and place as well as the colonial practices of knowledge extraction, scientific survey, and botanical illustration”.

Past winners of the Barbara Spohr Memorial Award include Anna Binta Diallo and Logan MacDonald (2021), Lotus L. Kang and Lorna Bauer (2018), Elise Rasmussen (2016), Colin Miner (2013), Celia Perrin Sidarous (2011), Maegan Hill-Carroll (2009), Ramona Ramlochand (2007), Justin Waddell (2005), Dianne Bos (2005) and David McMillan (2004), among others.

The 2025 Barbara Spohr Memorial Award gave an honourable mention to Korean-Canadian artist Minwoo Lee.

Featured

Gail Johnson

Gail Johnson is cofounder of Stir. She is a Vancouver-based journalist who has earned local and national nominations and awards for her work. She is a certified Gladue Report writer via Indigenous Perspectives Society in partnership with Royal Roads University and is a member of a judging panel for top Vancouver restaurants.

Articles

New release Canoe: A Collection of Canadian Art catalogues the iconic watercraft across two centuries

Book features paintings, sculpture, prints, carvings, glass, ceramics, and birch bark canoes by 50 artists

B.C.’s Roger Lee and Carole Itter among winners for Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts

Vancouver-based art historian and artist join six other laureates from across the country recognized for their contributions to Canadian culture

Other Light explores the power of light as a political and spiritual force, to November 28

The installation at the Western Front includes hourly screenings of Uzbekistani artist Saodat Ismailov’s films Melted into the Sun and To the Throat of the Sun

At Burnaby Art Gallery, artists spur social change in RESIST!, September 11 to November 15

Exhibition brings together significant works by Rawan Hassan روان حسن, Gord Hill, Laurence Hyde, and Elizabeth MacKenzie

221A and Ethọ́s Lab open new cultural innovation hub for youth and artists in Mount Pleasant

Owned by the City of Vancouver, the newly retrofitted Cultural Amenity Space at 177 East 3rd Avenue includes a multipurpose performance studio, art studio, and sound booth

VIVA Alliance’s Plasticity exhibition explores change and reinvention, September 9 to 16

The fourth edition of the annual juried exhibition features works in a variety of media by 17 artists at the Roundhouse Arts and Recreation Centre

Discover Whistler's rich arts and culture scene amid abundant natural beauty this fall

There are plenty of creative spots to visit in and around Whistler Village, from the Audain Art Museum to the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre

Arts Umbrella’s Splash 2026 Art Exhibition brings nearly 100 Canadian works to Pendulum Gallery, September 8 to October 1

Landon Mackenzie, Marie Khouri, Tiko Kerr, and dozens more artists have donated their original creations for the annual art auction

Renfrew Ravine Moon Festival celebrates the small wonders of local nature, September 7 to 26

The 24th annual event culminates in a five-hour journey featuring the Harvest Fair, Twilight Lantern Procession, and Streamside Lanterns

At THIS Gallery, Angela Fama’s Love Letters to Turbulence reimagines ideas of identity following trauma

In her participatory exhibition, interdisciplinary artist invites visitors to share narratives of trauma and healing through drawings, workshops, collaborative zines, and an online space

The Polygon Gallery goes online with new digital exhibition platform, Parallelogram

The inaugural offering, Volume 1: Interior Infinite Revisited, is a look back at a pandemic-era show that explored costume, transformation, and fluid identity

Astro Arts Festival celebrates the spirit of street art with new murals and a gallery show, August 7 to 9

Hosted by the Astro Club Artist facility, the event—now in its second year—continues to pick up where the Vancouver Mural Festival left off

At The Polygon, remarkable new exhibition connects Greg Girard’s images from across the decades, and across the Pacific

In Greg Girard: Photographs 1972–2026, Vancouver artist’s well-known nighttime hideaways and cityscapes share space with his affecting, lesser-known shots of urban dwellers

Labour dispute at Centre A sparks lockout and public rally

Negotiations reached an impasse in recent weeks and illustrate challenges facing small artistic nonprofit workplaces

Dona Nabata highlights Japanese-Canadian history at VisualSpace Gallery, July 18 to 25

The local artist’s new exhibition is based on a collection of photographs of Japanese Canadians taken in the years before the Second World War

Keerat Kaur brings a season of gathering to Surrey Art Gallery with If Gardens Could Dream

Vivid painting, sculpture, digital media, embroidery, poetry, and architectural forms examine generational ties within the South Asian diaspora

Eastside Arts Festival expands, opening the studio doors and public spaces of Vancouver’s arts scene

Marking its sixth year, the celebration brings communities together with more walking tours and hands-on workshops, from indigo dyeing to plein air drawing

Becoming: The Art of Gu Xiong is now on view at the Museum of Vancouver

Open until February 2027, the exhibition celebrates the Chinese-Canadian artist’s life and work, connecting personal memory and histories of migration

Stir Cheat Sheet: Beach concerts to artisan market, 5 happenings to hit at Harrison Festival of the Arts

Hawksley Workman, plus mesmerizing cultural melds from El Balcón, Benin International Musical, and more

Keerat Kaur's If Gardens Could Dream celebrates lush language and nature at Surrey Art Gallery, July 4 to August 30

Solo exhibition spans painting, sculpture, digital media, embroidery, poetry, and architectural forms

Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 design-minded happenings to catch at West Coast Modern Week

From walking tours through upper Ambleside’s Modernist landmarks to a screening about an unsung mid-century design maverick at Kay Meek Arts Centre, architectural celebrations abound

Art Downtown brings painting, local talent, and some welcome creative chaos to city’s core, on Thursdays, July 2 to 23

In addition to finished pieces in a variety of styles, weekly event also features live music, art demonstrations, and hands-on workshops

Myfanwy MacLeod’s Trophies unpacks frat-house history of Burnaby Art Gallery site

Beer kegs to donkey heads, Vancouver artist’s expansive new exhibition uncovers Ceperley Mansion’s past while linking it to masculinity rites, from Ancient Greece through to today’s headlines

Eastside Arts Festival unveils new workshops and full schedule for event running July 17 to 26

New art-making opportunities and expanded art walks are part of the programming just announced

Queer Arts Festival kicks off with exhibitions “On the Edge”, June 5 to 27

Community Art Show captures a cross-section of experience, while Varied Editions plays with multiple prints of the same image

West of Main Art Walk spans collage, woodblock prints, oils, and more, May 30 and 31

Spreading as far west as Tolmie Street, Artists in Our Midst’s annual open-studio event features 79 talents in all

B.C. visual artist Samuel Roy-Bois named finalist for national Sobey Art Award

UBC Okanagan associate professor has a celebrated multidisciplinary practice that works across sculpture, installation, photography, and the built environment

At the Museum of Anthropology, Jut-ke-Nay–Hazel Wilson weaves Haida history into robes

New exhibition I Use My Haida Eyes features 51 of the artist’s intricate works, which hold layers of cultural knowledge

Stir Cheat Sheet: 4 artists to check out at Art Vancouver 2026

These are just a few of the highlights at the 10th annual edition of the showcase of Canadian and international artists

With mysterious Magic Show, artist Rosamunde Bordo blurs line between real and fictional worlds

Multilayered exhibition of video and handcrafted works at Western Front blends detective tales and esoteric rituals to create an ongoing, genre-defying form of storytelling