PLATFORM centre is excited to announce the 2026 PLATFORM Photography Award Winner
This year the award goes to interdisciplinary artist, Mahlet Cuff (MB).
PLATFORM is looking forward to supporting the creation of new works by Cuff and working together over the next year. We are excited to see Mahlet continue expanding their practice through sound, video, and photography, further exploring the relationships between these mediums. The award includes $3000 CAD, a full year of darkroom and digital workspace access, support from PLATFORM staff and a one year membership to PLATFORM. This work will debut in March 2027 in Gallery 2.
Mahlet Cuff is a multidisciplinary artist, curator, writer, filmmaker, film programmer, DJ, sound artist, community organizer and arts cultural worker based in Winnipeg Manitoba (Treaty 1).
Through an ethnographic based practice they are interested in themes of memory and erasure in order to make sense of the Black Queer diasporic communities they are a part of and engage with. By using Black feminist citational praxis and interrogating their own personal familial archives, they create reimagined Black Queer Diasporic dance and music histories by visually and sonically collaging moving images and sound. Cuff’s work has been screened and exhibited in Winnipeg, Toronto, Windsor, New York, Paris and Brazil. Their video piece titled UTOPIA (an ode to the past, present and future) was shortlisted for the 2025 FluxusMuseum Prize for Experimental Video. In 2026 they were nominated for the Winnipeg Arts Council RBC on the Rise Award. Cuff holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Women’s and Gender Studies from the University of Winnipeg.
CONGRATULATIONS MAHLET
PAST RECIPIENTS
2025 Dion Smith-Dokkie, Maison de Santé
2024 Skye Callow, Spiritual Readings: $50
2023 Taylor McArthur, circles of existence
2022 Glodi Bahati, Notes on Self Invention
2021 Elise Dawson, The Ideal Make Body
2021 Alyssa Bornn, Soft Ceiling
2021 Charles Venzon, Balikbayan Boxes-The Remittance Project-Hereforu
2020 Jean Borbridge, Hypermarket Rupture
2020 Christina Hajjar, Don’t Forget to Count Your Blessings
2020 Iyunade Judah, Transcension
2019 Rhayne Vermette, True Stories
2018 Mariana Muñoz Gomez, Recorrer, to wander
2017 Hannah Doucet, I wondered when my body would deflate.