Karl and Khim Mata Hipol, North Shore Studio Award Recipients
Karl Mata Hipol is a Filipino Canadian multidisciplinary artist and curator. He lives and creates in the traditional unceded territories of the Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh nations, commonly known as North Vancouver. Currently, through his artistic practice he looks at archival collections from galleries and museums and investigates the absence or presence of Filipinos within the Canadian landscape. Ultimately, his goal is to comprehend my positionality, weave his story and disturb the ‘Filipino invisibility’ in Canada. Holding a BFA (2022) from Emily Carr University of Art + Design, with a major in Visual Art and a minor in Curatorial Practices, he has garnered recognition for his commitment to Anti-Racism + Social Justice, receiving an Honourable mention for the ECU Grad Award and OPUS Art Supplies Grad Award. He was also awarded the 2024 AGO X RBC Emerging Artist-in-Residence, and the 2022 Artist-in-Residence by Herschel Supply Co. His other awards include the Art Rapture Prize for Visual Art and a Visual Art Award from the BC Arts Council (2023-2024). He has exhibited at Deer Lake Art Gallery (2023) and Gordon Smith Gallery (2023). He has been commissioned for public artworks by the Ferry Building Art Gallery (2023), Burnaby Village Museum (2022), and Burrard Arts Foundation (2022).
Khim Mata Hipol (b. 1999, La Union, Philippines; North Vancouver, BC) is an emerging interdisciplinary artist based on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Tsleil Waututh, and Musqueam people. Hipol focuses his work primarily on lens-based media and has expanded to printmaking, sculpture, and text. By investigating the impacts of colonialism and the Filipino migration it caused, Hipol considers how identity and culture cross-pollinate between the Philippines and Canada. His positionality, which lies between these two colonized and colonial structures, is the motivation behind his practice, at once highlighting and complicating these systems. He graduated with a Certificate of Photography (2019) and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Major in Photography and a Minor in Art and Text (2023) from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Hipol is a recipient of the Audain Travel Award (2022), Chick Rice Award for Excellence in Photography (2023), An honorable mention of the Seymour Art Gallery ‘New and Emerging’ (2022) and was long-listed for the Lind Prize (2022, 2023). He has shown his work in his solo show at The Lobby, Union Christian College, in Philippines (2023) and duo show at Ciano Umuk, Bauang, Philippines (2024) and Gordon Smith Gallery, North Vancouver (2023). He shared his works in group shows at Filter Photo in Chicago Illinois (2024), Blue Sky Gallery in Oregon (2024), Pendulum Gallery (2024), Akasha Art, Toronto, Ontario (2024), Access Gallery (2024), The Center of Fine Arts Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA (2022), Contemporary Calgary, Calgary, Alberta (2022 and 2023), and Vancouver and Philippines (2023). His works have been privately collected in Canada, the USA, and the Philippines.
During their time at Griffin, Karl and Khim Mata Hipol are working on a collaborative artistic residency titled "Looking Back to Go Farther." Drawing inspiration from the poignant Filipino saying "ang hindi lumingon sa pinangalingan, ay hindi makararating sa paroroonan" ("one who does not look back on their roots, will not reach their destination"), their project explores their journey of being Filipino immigrants turned naturalized Canadians returning to their ancestral homeland, the Philippines, after nearly a decade, from Canada.
