We warmly congratulate Isha Musampa, the winner of the 16th annual C New Critics Award!

Musampa’s confident voice impressed jurors in her review of the exhibition “The past tense was always longer” (April 11–13, 2025, Grand Quay of the Port of Montreal), which was curated by Anaïs Castro for Plural 2025 and featured works by Nadia Belerique, Myriam Dion, Berirouche Feddal, Joyce Joumaa, Lotus L. Kang, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Kyle Alden Martens, Jeneen Frei Njootli, Sheilah ReStack, Michaëlle Sergile, and Ingrid Syage Tremblay. Musampa untangles how memory is physically impressed upon the world through a sensitive look at the associations of materials like textile (tenderness), wood (structure), and metal (resistance): “Artworks unsettle stillness like breath caught in a cold room. A reminder that memory binds identity before splintering into forms shaped by perception.” We’re excited to publish her text in C162 Tidal (Winter 2026).

We also congratulate Amanda Blake and Madison Beale as honourable mentions this year. Blake’s review of Tamara Jones’s “Public Infrastructure” (April 4–27, 2025, Whippersnapper Gallery) recalls how the artist’s performance video and textile sculptures disrupt hostile city architecture and its division of public and private life. Beale’s critical view on the exhibition “Jon Sasaki: Homage” (February 27–April 26, 2025, University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery, Winnipeg) probes the continuing sentimental forces and colonial tensions in homages to the Group of Seven.

Thank you to everyone who participated and to this year’s jurors, Christina Battle, Dr. Andrew Gayed, and C editor Joy Xiang!

Isha Musampa is interested in how curation can act as a bridge between cultural nuance and market reality. Holding a master’s in Marketing Communications from Westminster University and a bachelor’s in Political Science from Concordia University, her writing has explored themes such as the restitution of the Benin Bronzes for Art-icle, the editorial arm of Connect Art. She has advised the Jara-Michel Collection of Haitian popular art and the Saint-Soleil movement. She guides her clients toward acquisitions that preserve cultural heritage while engaging with contemporary discourse.

Madison Beale is a Winnipeg-based writer and arts professional. She is the host and producer of The Artalogue Podcast, a podcast about art careers.

Amanda Blake is an emerging artist primarily living and working in Toronto. She graduated in 2023 with a BFA from OCAD University, majoring in Sculpture and Installation, and subsequently completed a post-graduate certificate in Art History in 2024. Her work has been featured in exhibitions across North America. Blake’s practice consists of mixed media sculptures that often incorporate textiles, woodworking, and found objects, specifically seeking to define the abstract space of the body, be it emotional, social, or psychological. She explores feelings of stasis that cannot be measured through structures of space, time, and language, such as the effort to place herself within a personal history that is diverse and diasporic. While in school and since graduating, Blake has worked in the arts, from education and event planning to research and non-profit galleries.