Shani Mootoo

Shani Mootoo is an accomplished writer, filmmaker, painter and photographer who has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She earned a BFA from the University of Western Ontario, and an MA in English from the University of Guelph. Her most recent novel, Polar Vortex, has been shortlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize. She is the recipient of a Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Award, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award,and has been awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Western University. 

In her artworks, Mootoo explores the idea of dislocation, identity, belonging: “…identity, like perspective, is inevitably shifting and multi-faceted.”

Mootoo's paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally, most notably at the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Queen’s Museum in NYC, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and at the Venice Biennale. She lives in Southern Ontario, Canada.

Her videos include “English Lesson”, “Wild Woman in The Woods” and “Her Sweetness Lingers,” and have been screened in film and video festivals and art exhibitions locally and internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. 

Photo of artist, credit: Mike Gaudar

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