$100,000 for this? let's talk about privacy, consent and the art world
Steven Shearer has just been awarded $100,000.
The Vancouver artist received the 2026 Audain Prize for the Visual Arts, one of British Columbia's major art awards.
And yes, artists deserve recognition. Art can challenge us. Art can make us uncomfortable. Art can make us question what we see.
But this one made me stop.
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| Sleeping cat by Zipolita |
Because part of Shearer's practice involves photographs of people sleeping that he did not take himself.
These aren't models he photographed for a commissioned project. His galleries and exhibition materials describe them as found images sourced from the internet and other media. Capture Photography Festival described the photographs used in his 2021 Vancouver billboard project as images of sleeping people selected from his collection of photographs “mined from the internet, eBay and various print media.”
The images were then enlarged and transformed into major artworks.
In 2021, seven of these enormous images were installed along Vancouver's Arbutus Greenway. They were removed after public complaints, with some people saying the images reminded them of dead bodies.
And here's the part I cannot get out of my head.
Shearer is famously protective of his own image.
For years, he has had virtually no photographs of himself circulating online. In a video released around the prize, he explained that this became a dynamic he was comfortable with.
His privacy matters.
His choice about his own image matters.
I agree.
But what about the people in his photographs?
Did they choose to have their sleeping faces collected?
Did they know their images could eventually become enormous works of art?
Did they know they could be displayed publicly, reproduced, exhibited internationally and become part of an artist's celebrated body of work?
Did they receive anything?
We don't know.
And that is precisely the question.
I'm not claiming that Shearer broke a law or that every person whose photograph he used objected. The available reporting does not establish that.
I'm asking something more basic:
Does “it was on the internet” mean “you can take it”?
We have spent years learning that the internet does not magically erase privacy.
People photograph strangers.
People repost other people's photographs.
People screenshot vulnerable moments.
People take something intimate and turn it into content.
And increasingly, we're asking who owns an image, who gave permission, who benefits and who gets to decide where that image goes.
So why should the art world be exempt from asking the same questions?
The gallery description actually makes the conceptual issue explicit: Shearer's work examines the circulation of photographic images and questions established ideas of presentation and propriety.
Fine.
Then let's question it.
Who gets to be anonymous?
Who gets to control their image?
Who gets to turn somebody else's vulnerable moment into art?
And perhaps most importantly:
Who gets rewarded?
Because the person sleeping in the photograph doesn't get the $100,000 Audain Prize.
The artist does.
And I'm supposed to simply applaud because the appropriation has been elevated into “high art”?
No.
I'm uncomfortable with that.
Not because I'm against provocative art.
Not because I'm against contemporary art.
Not because I think every artwork needs to be pretty or comfortable.
I'm uncomfortable because there appears to be a profound imbalance between the artist's carefully protected privacy and the vulnerable privacy of the people whose images became part of his artistic material.
Maybe that's the point of the work.
Maybe the discomfort is intentional.
Maybe the art world considers that tension intellectually fascinating.
But here's my question:
At what point does making us think about exploitation become exploitation?
And why, in 2026, are we still so willing to celebrate the person holding the camera—or appropriating the image—while barely asking what happened to the person inside the frame?
$100,000 is a lot of money.
Maybe the real value of this controversy isn't deciding whether Steven Shearer is a good or bad artist.
Maybe it's asking whether the art world has sufficiently questioned the ethics of what it rewards.
And if we're going to celebrate privacy for the artist—
perhaps we should care about it for everyone else, too.
10 questions for the art world
1. When does an image being publicly available become an excuse to stop asking whether the person in it ever gave meaningful consent?
2. Should an artist's right to privacy make us think differently about the privacy of the people represented in their work?
3. Who benefits when an ordinary person's vulnerable moment becomes a celebrated artwork — and who has no say in what happens to that image?
4. Should galleries and juries ask artists where found images came from and what is known about the people depicted before rewarding the resulting work?
5. What responsibility do universities and art schools have to teach students not only how to appropriate images, but when appropriation raises ethical questions?
6. Are grants and major prizes rewarding artistic innovation alone, or should ethical considerations about the materials and methods also matter?
7. What are we teaching young artists when we celebrate the transformation of someone else's private or vulnerable image into something commercially or institutionally valuable?
8. Should parents and teachers be teaching young people that “it's on the internet” does not necessarily mean “it's yours to use”?
9. Where is the line between making viewers uncomfortable through art and making an actual person vulnerable without their knowledge?
10. If the art world expects us to respect an artist's boundaries around their own image, shouldn't that same principle of dignity and choice extend to the people appearing in
art ethics, privacy, consent, appropriation, found photography, contemporary art, art education, grants, galleries, artistic responsibility
