Interdisciplinary artist Jeneen Frei Njootli has made it onto the short list for the coveted national Sobey Art Award--a prize that carries with it $100,000. She's a Vuntut Gwitchin artist who's well-known locally, having studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and at UBC for her masters of fine arts, as well as holding a Western Front Media Arts residency in 2016.

She produces mixed-media, audio, performance, and installation works. Her work is in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s permanent collection, and her mixed-media textile work, which often mashes audio elements, has been seen here everywhere from Indigenous Fashion Week to Skwachays Lodge during Culture Days last year.

At the Contemporary Art Gallery until June 24, you can also see the work of two others from the five people on the short list for the visual-art prize aimed at talents 40 years old or younger. Showing in the exhibit called The Blue Hour, which was part of the recent Capture Photography Festival, are Ottawa-based Joi T. Arcand, of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation (whose shots add Cree syllabics to old-timey Prairie streetscapes), and Montreal-trained, Paris-based Kapwani Kiwanga (whose folding shots of geological samples enact a kind of instant Pangaea Ultima.

They join Montreal's Jon Rafman and Mi'kmaq artist Jordan Bennett on the Sobey short list.

On November 14, one of the artists will receive the first prize, with the four runners-up winning $25,000 each. Work by the five artists will be showcased in an exhibition at Ottawa's National Gallery of Canada that opens on October 3.

The other 20 artists on the Sobey longlist will each receive $2,000.

Work by the five shortlisted artists will be featured in a group exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada that opens on October 3.