"[Sterbak’s] social and philosophical scope, too often ignored, still resonates in the cultural and social issues that seize society today." - Line Ouellet, Executive Director, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (nominator)

Jana Sterbak is reliably audacious and hard-hitting. In her work, she takes ice, bread, chocolate, meat, hair, sweat, bronze, stone, metal and fire and gives them unexpected forms that leave no one indifferent. Often described as irreverent, each work, video or performance breaks out of the safe mould of what is acceptable, and with this unique use of materials, demands a reaction. Since she exploded onto the art scene, Jana Sterbak has constantly reinvented herself and carried on a remarkable conversation about the human condition in all its disillusions and desires, fears and pain, freedom and constraints, vulnerability and transience. Her art narrates the myths of our contemporary world.