2025 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators Awarded to Tristan Sauer
The 13th annual prize has been awarded to emerging curator Tristan Sauer. His proposed exhibition, Soft Internet Theory, has been selected as the winning submission and will be presented at Art Gallery of Guelph from September 18, 2025 to January 4, 2026. The award was presented at a gala ceremony at Gladstone House in Toronto on April 3, 2025.
Four past winners were present to help amplify the significance of the prize: Dallas Fellini (2024), Holly Chang (2023), Erin Szikora (2022), and Yasmin Nurming-Por (2017).
Created in 2012, the prestigious prize is awarded annually to an emerging Canadian curator. By supporting and mobilizing Canadian creative talent, the Middlebrook Prize aims to inspire positive social change through creativity in an era of ongoing and unprecedented economic, environmental, and cultural challenges. Tristan joins a growing cohort of leaders in Canadian visual arts now numbering 16 Middlebrook Prize winners.
Jury Response
This year’s Jury comprises:
- Erin Szikora (Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Guelph),
- Charles Campbell (independent artist, writer, and curator), and
- Pan Wendt (Curator, Confederation Centre Art Gallery)
“Sauer did much more than just use the work of artists to illustrate a curator’s idea; the choice of works both embodied and opened up the theme,” stated Wendt.
“Sauer’s proposal is forward thinking and timely”, notes Szikora. “The nuance and expertise he brings to this topic as both a curator and new media artist illuminates challenging realities that no longer feel avoidable. My congratulations!”
The “dead internet theory,” according to Sauer, “is an observation–one that the internet, the cornerstone for human connection, a replacement for the town square, the secret meeting spots, back alleys and bars, is now void of life. Gone are the unrestricted voices of the masses, replaced by white noise from bots and AI-generated images.
”Soft Internet Theory confronts the threat artificial intelligence poses to cyberspace by calling attention back to the handmade and the human heartbeat that once gave the internet its revolutionary potential. Rejecting the idea of the “dead internet”, the exhibition revises narratives of fear, artifice, and anxiety with interactive sculpture, installation, and textile works “that humanize technology, seek empathy in the digital, and create poetry in the CMD line.”
Curator’s Biography
Tristan Sauer is a New Media Artist and Curator critically interested in technology and capitalism, viewing their relationship as a potential modern-day Pandora’s box. His work explores the intersections between our digital and physical worlds, and how an inside-out look at internet culture and our response to “capitalist horrors within our comprehension” can reveal more about the human condition. Working with mediums such as wearable technology, electronic sculpture, and net-art, Sauer explores these topics through an afro-futurist lens, imagining and critiquing the outcomes of our relationships with technology on our future.
A graduate of the New Media program at Toronto Metropolitan University, Sauer has presented locally at the Plumb, Meridian Art Centre, Gallery 1313, Whippersnapper Gallery, Lansdowne Station, with The Artist Project, and Nuit Blanche. He has curated for Long Winter, Symbicocene Gallery, REEL Asian Film Festival, Xpace Cultural Centre, Ed Video Media Arts Centre, and C Magazine.
Thank You
Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators is made possible through the support of Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund at Centre Wellington Community Foundation, Musagetes Fund at Guelph Community Foundation, and private donations.
We acknowledge our Advisory Board: Sascha Hastings and Peter Poole.
