Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun awarded the 2025 Gershon Iskowitz Prize

The Gershon Iskowitz Foundation announced Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun as the recipient of the 2025 Gershon Iskowitz Prize. The $75,000 award is presented annually to an artist who has made an outstanding contribution to the visual arts in Canada. In addition to the Prize, the Foundation will generously support a solo exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in February 2027. Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun is an artist and activist based in Vancouver who is known for combining traditional Coast Salish cosmology and motifs with formal tropes borrowed from surrealism and pop art. The resulting grand-scale paintings address contemporary political urgencies, including paying witness to the horrors of colonial violence, increasing respect for the land and environmental care, and demanding justice and sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples.