The recipient of the fifth annual Prefix Prize is Québécois artist Isabelle Hayeur. Her series Borderlands (2024), presented here in its world premiere and at a critical moment in American politics, features photographs created at the Mexico/U.S. border in regions known for frequent illegal border crossings. The border wall, both as an object and as a symbol, plays a pivotal role, and through it, Hayeur draws attention to the systems and structures to which migrants are subjected.

Hayeur was born in Montréal and raised in a small town in the province of Québec, where she currently resides. Since launching her career in the mid-1990s, she has produced a substantial body of work that primarily includes photographic series and video art, as well as site-specific installations, public-art commissions and artist books. Responding to the natural environment and land development in the twenty-first century, her work often depicts barren, desolate landscapes and marginalized, disenfranchised peoples, conjuring feelings of uprootedness, isolation and alienation. 

In her earliest work, Hayeur employed digital technology to create images of panoramic landscapes and suburban homes. Suturing together visual materials from a variety of sources into a single photograph, she constructed images of buildings and places which, at first glance, appear spatially coherent, even visually seductive, but which, upon closer scrutiny, clearly could not exist. Plausible but not possible, these images serve to defamiliarize their subjects, drawing attention to the unreality of tourist destinations and suburban housing, which are so often a stylistic mishmash out of keeping with their natural, historical, and cultural contexts. In the broadest sense, Hayeur used the artistic device of pastiche in these early works to foster a critical understanding of the use of pastiche in the real world. 

In the ensuing years, Hayeur has maintained the artistry, criticality, and, indeed, beauty of her early work, while her approach, over time, has become more documentarian, exploring subjects as far-ranging as the alteration of the land for hydroelectric power in Québec, the destructiveness of forest fires in the Thompson River valley in British Columbia, the impact of the cattle and beef industry from Kansas to Colorado, and the drying up of the Salton Sea in southwestern California, as well as political protests and environmental actions. Acutely critical, unabashedly political, her work has evolved to more explicitly express her concerns about the current global order.

Most recently, Hayeur has devoted herself to the subject of migration. Initially, her interest in the subject was piqued when, in 2012, she participated in an artist residency in Strasbourg, the location of the European Court of Human Rights, which, at that time, was surrounded by migrants living in makeshift shelters. In 2024, she turned her attention to the contentious border between Mexico and the United States, taking photographs from San Diego to the Imperial Valley in southern California to Texas. The resulting work, Borderlands (2024), features forty photographs and a video. These images were created in several regions, most notably, the area near Jacumba, California, which is well known for frequent illegal border crossings. Here, in its world premiere, Hayeur presents a selection of photographs that depicts this locale in all its strange and surreal complexity. The border wall, both as an object and as a symbol, plays a pivotal role.

As it happens, Borderlands’ premiere is taking place at a critical moment in American politics—a moment that makes the work appear almost prescient. In the weeks leading up to his inauguration, the 47th president of the United States promised immediately upon his installation in the Oval Office to undertake a series of executive actions, the single most prominent of which was to be aimed at the Mexico–U.S. border. Increased border controls, the deployment of the military, and mass deportations were all announced. The northern border with Canada, too, has come under increased scrutiny. Observing this unfolding situation, Hayeur has speculated that “Canada, along with Mexico, will be pressured to secure its border. And there will be economic pressure to comply.”

While Hayeur shares certain characteristics with documentary photographers, she doesn’t fit comfortably within the genre. Her approach is unconventional, incredibly artful and deeply humanistic. She maintains a distance from her human subjects that, in the domain of documentary or photojournalism, is often seen as a flaw, but here, it’s a virtue. She’s respectful rather than exploitative, and, most importantly, she rightly keeps the focus on the systems and structures to which the migrants are subjected: the cameras, the environment, the wall itself. Through artistic strategies of symbolism and surrealism, she deftly exposes the vulnerability of the migrants who are at the mercy of what is an essentially authoritarian power. Herein lies the strength of her work.

Curated by Scott McLeod, with the Prefix Prize jury 

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Launched in 2021, the Prefix Prize is awarded annually to a photographic artist of any nationality. Designed to honour artists at any stage of their careers who have yet to receive the recognition they deserve, the prize recognizes one artist with an exhibition, a publication, and a cash award of $5,000.00 and up to two artists with honourable mentions consisting of cash awards of $1,000.00 each.

For the fifth annual Prefix Prize, artists Aaron Jones and Ethan Murphy are the recipients of honourable mentions. A Toronto-based artist who specializes in collage, Aaron Jones employs found images in the creative exercise of world building. Ethan Murphy, from St. John’s, Newfoundland, takes as his inspiration the self-sufficiency and resourcefulness of island communities.  

The fifth annual Prefix Prize was juried by seven photographic arts professionals, including Yas Fakhr, designer, Underline Studio; Katerina Gregos, artistic director, EMST National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; Marie-Josée Jean, executive and artistic director, Vox centre de l’image contemporaine; Scott McLeod, director and curator, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art; Tara Smith, executive director, Contact Photography Festival; and Jennifer Young and Caroline Laxton, co-chairs, Project Development, Partners in Art. 

The candidates for this year’s prize were nominated by Heather Anderson, curator, Carleton University Art Gallery; Noa Bronstein, assistant director, Art Museum at the University of Toronto; France Choinière, artistic and general direction, Dazibao; Mireille Eagan, curator of contemporary art, The Rooms; Betty Julian, senior curator, McMaster Museum of Art; Euijung McGillis, assistant curator, contemporary art, National Gallery of Canada; Gaëlle Morel, exhibitions curator, The Image Centre, Toronto Metropolitan University; Lillian O’Brien-Davis, curator of collections and contemporary art engagement, The Goldfarb Gallery, York University; and Tara Westermann, gallery director, Smokestack.

The Prefix Prize is presented by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in partnership with CONTACT Photography Festival and Urbanspace Gallery, and with the support of founding partner, Partners in Art.

Curated by Scott McLeod

• Scott McLeod is a curator, writer, editor, and administrator. For the past twenty-five years, he has served in various capacities at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art (Toronto). The editor and publisher of Prefix Photo magazine for twenty years and the co-programmer of the Urban Field Speakers Series for fifteen years, he currently serves as the director and curator. Under his directorship, Prefix ICA has received twenty awards from Galeries Ontario/Ontario Galleries in recognition of its exhibitions, installations, and publications. A member of AICA Canada, he is also a member of the board of directors of IKT International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.