Activists unfurl a banner reading “No Arms in the Arts” outside Scotiabank’s corporate offices during an action in downtown Toronto, 2024. Photo by Nur Dogan.

In November, as Israel continued to violate the ‘ceasefire’ in Gaza, almost 200 cultural workers signed a pledge to boycott the Scotiabank Photography Award, an annual Canadian peer-nominated lens-based prize founded in 2010. “We refuse to be a nominee, nominator, or juror for the Scotiabank Photography Award, or participate in the Award in any way, until Scotiabank divests completely from Elbit Systems,” the statement reads. The pledge has been signed by writers, curators, artists, and photographers, including former nominees, finalists, and nominators of the award.

Headquartered in Haifa, Elbit Systems is a major Israeli weapons manufacturer responsible for producing a significant share of the military equipment that has maimed, murdered, and terrorized Palestinians for decades. During the current genocide, homes, schools, libraries, hospitals, religious sites, and other institutions have been destroyed by one of the most powerful militaries in the world, fuelled by corporations such as Elbit.

Amid a cultural landscape that profits from genocide, the boycott of the Scotiabank Photography Award emerged from No Arms in the Arts (NAITA), a coalition of authors, artists, and organizers who have spent the past two years demanding that festivals like the Toronto Biennial of Art and CONTACT—Toronto’s international festival of photography—and awards such as the Giller Prize, pressure their sponsor Scotiabank to divest from Elbit. The bank has major investments in the company and is one of its top foreign shareholders. To see, to make, to show, and to write about art in Canada is too often premised on money that funds the technologies and weapons used to brutalize and kill Palestinians.

Sukaina Kubba, a multidisciplinary artist and organizer with NAITA, notes the particularities of this award. “It’s not just an award sponsored by Scotiabank. It’s co-founded by Scotiabank with Edward Burtynsky [a world-famous Canadian photographer]. The ceremonies are sometimes held at Scotiabank headquarters. They’re attended by higher-up members of the bank as well. It’s also the only award listed on their website. So it’s their award.”

Branding itself as a patron of the arts, Scotiabank describes the Photography Award on its website as “Canada’s largest and most prestigious annual peer-nominated and peer-reviewed award.” The winner receives an exhibition, a book publication, and $50,000 in cash—money indirectly derived from the dispossession of Palestinians. The award, which will be handed out in May, functions as a reputational laundering mechanism for bankers, donors, and other war profiteers. Artists, writers, and organizers involved in cultural boycotts like this one are refusing that veneer of respectability and legitimation.

It is also worth noting that the Canadian government uses taxpayer dollars to purchase Israeli weapons directly from Elbit, making calls for a “two-way arms embargo” increasingly urgent. Elbit produces drones like those referenced by........

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