Now in its 15th year, the C New Critics Award is designed to help identify, develop, and promote the work of emerging art critics. Writers are invited to submit an 800-1,000 word review of an exhibition, performance, publication, or moving image work, by May 30, 2024. The winner will receive $750, editorial support to prepare their article for publication in the Winter issue of C Magazine, and a two-year subscription. All participants will receive a one-year subscription.

For the purposes of the award, an emerging writer is defined as anyone who has not published more than one piece of writing in a recognized print or online publication, exclusive of student-run journals and magazines. The competition is open to anyone residing in Canada, regardless of citizenship status, and to Canadians living abroad.

Exhibition and performance reviews must address work that occurred no earlier than January 1, 2024, whereas book and moving image work reviews must address work made in the past two years. Submissions must not be previously published, or slated for future publication elsewhere. See our submissions page for more information for writers.

One submission per person. Upload your submission here at award-submission.cmagazine.com. Mail or fax submissions will not be accepted. Please let us know of any accommodation we may provide during the application process. Note that measures are taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remains unknown to adjudicators. If you have questions please direct them to editor@cmagazine.com

Submissions will be assessed by Maandeeq Mohamed, Online and Reviews Editor at C Magazine, alongside our two external jurors: Alice Ming Wai Jim & Nadia Kurd.

Alice Ming Wai Jim is an art historian and curator based in Montreal. She is currently Concordia University Research Chair in Critical Curatorial Studies and Decolonizing Art Institutions and founding editor-in-chief of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill, with Concordia University and NYU).

Previously Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories, 2017-2022, she co-convened the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange, GAX 2019 Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal): Asian Indigenous Relations in Contemporary Art on the theme of curatorial hospitality. She is currently working on a SSHRC-funded oral histories project that examines Afrofuturism and Black Lives Matter in the Canadian art scene. Recent projects include the WPC 2023 “Worlding Tiohtià:ke/Montreal: Bridging Knowledges, Practices, and Beings” conference at Concordia University, 31 March –1 April 2023 about how global, transnational, and transcultural public narratives are being represented in universities, museums and other spaces of art and culture, focusing on the unique art ecology of Montreal. Jim was recipient of UAAC’s 2022 inaugural Award for the advancement of equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, and is a member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.

Nadia Kurd is an interdisciplinary curator and art historian with a PhD from McGill University. She has special interests in museum practices and advocacy, contemporary Muslim visual culture and Islamic architecture in North America. In addition to working at diverse arts organizations such as the Ontario Association of Art Galleries and the Prison Arts Foundation, Nadia was the Curator of the Thunder Bay Art Gallery from 2010-2018, where her focus was on community engagement and emerging artists in Northwestern Ontario. In recognition of her work, she was awarded the Northwestern Ontario Visionary Award in 2014 and the Canadian Council of Muslim Women’s Women Who Inspire Award in 2016. She was the recipient of the 2017 Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art Fellowship and was the 2018 Arts-Writer in Residence at the Banff International Curatorial Institute. Nadia currently serves on the Editorial Committee for BlackFlash Magazine and is the Curator at the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection.

2023 C New Critics Award winner: Francesca Bennett, for her review of Woojae Kim’s exhibition “With a heart that sings the stars, I will love all things dying,” which was published in C156 "Craft" (Winter 2024).

Francesca Bennett has supported artists' practices on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations since 2003. Informed by her work in collections, archives, and administration, her curatorial and writing practices are centred on the extension of personal transformative encounters with objects toward their multitude of social relations.

We would also like to congratulate Julia Trojanowski, who was chosen by the jury for Honourable Mention. Trojanowski’s review of “Ominous Chaos” (Centre A, 8 April to 3 June 2023), an exhibition curated by Bahar Mohazabnia and featuring artists Homa Khosravi and Marzieh Mosaverzadeh.

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