Montreal Team

WORLDING PUBLIC CULTURES MONTREAL TEAM

faculty members

Alice Ming Wai Jim is Professor and Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories in Montreal, Canada. She is co-editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill with Concordia and NYU). Jim is also Adjunct Professor in Graduate Studies at OCAD University, Toronto (2021-2024).

As an art historian, curator and cultural organizer, her research and teaching are in the fields of contemporary art,media art, ethnocultural and global art histories, international art exhibitions, and critical curatorial studies, with an interest in contemporary Asian art and global Asian diasporic art from a transnational perspective. Focusing primarily on contemporary Asian Canadian and African Canadian artists, she has curated exhibitions of over fifty artists of color and Indigenous artists and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. She has also been involved in a leadership capacity in several formal partnerships involving international networking and community building initiatives, with a strong commitment to research and social justice. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences and her publications appear widely in peer-reviewed journals, book anthologies, and exhibition catalogues. Research publications include contributions to Narratives Unfolding: National Art Histories in an Unfinished World (2017); Third Text; Desire/Change:Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada (2017); Mass Effect: Art and the Internet in the 21st Century (2015), and Negotiations in a Vacant Lot:Studying the Visual in Canada (2014). In 2017, she curated DIY Haunt: Yen-Chao Lin (Oboro, Montreal) and Animate: Diyan Achjadi and Alisi Telengut at Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa. Jim co-edited, with Marie Fraser, the fall 2018 issue of RACAR on the theme of “Critical Curating.”
Jim is the 2015 recipient of the Centre de documentation d'Artexte Award for Research in Contemporary Art. She received the Faculty of Fine Arts Distinguished Teaching Award in 2014 and the Christopher Jackson Teaching Award from the Department of Art History in 2016.She has been a member of UAAC (Universities Art Association of Canada)since 1994; and CAA (College Art Association) since 1999; a representative member and panel committee chair of the CAA Affiliated Society, the Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN), since 2009; a research associate of Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA), Carleton University, Ottawa, since 2009; and a research member of the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX) since 2014.

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Dr. Analays Alvarez Hernandez is a Havana-born art historian and independent curator based in Montréal/Tiohti:áke/Mooniyang as an uninvited guest. She has received a bachelor’s degree in Art History (2005) from the Universidad de La Habana, and her doctorate (2015) from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Since 2019, she is Assistant Professor of Global Art in the Département d’histoire de l’art et d’études cinématographiques at the Université de Montréal.

Her research focuses on contemporary art, with an emphasis on commemoration and public art, global art histories and diasporas, Latinx-Canadian art, and curating.

In the past, she has also taught at the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa. Her main research projects focus on “domestic art galleries” in (post)socialist societies, as well as on the activity of Latinx-Canadian artists in Montréal in the 21st century. She has co-edited Latin American Art(ists) from/in Canada: Expanding Narratives, Territories, and Perspectives (Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture journal, University of California Press, Winter, 2022) and “Revised Commemoration” in Public Art: What Future for the Monument? (RACAR journal, Universities Art Association of Canada, Fall, 2021). Alongside her academic research and teaching experience, Alvarez Hernandez has organized several exhibitions in Montreal, Havana, and Toronto as an independent curator. She also sits on the board of the artist-run center OBORO and is a member of the Culture Montréal’s Commission permanente de l’art public.

keywords that highlight my research interests
Global arts histories, contemporary art, public art, monuments and memorials, diasporas, ethnocultural communities in Canada, contemporary Latin American art, Latino Canadian art, contemporary, Cuban art, curating.

May Chew is an Assistant Professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and Department of Art History at Concordia University and has received her PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, and held a postdoctoral fellowship at York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts &Technology.

Her current research focuses on interactive and immersive technologies in diverse museum and exhibit spaces across Canada, and how these technologies facilitate the material practice of nation and cultural citizenship. Her recent work includes a chapter in the anthology Material Cultures in Canada (WLU Press, 2015); articles in Imaginations, the International Journal of Heritage Studies, the Journal of Canadian Art History; and Public 57: Archives/Counter-Archives, which she co-edited with Susan Lord and Janine Marchessault. She is a collaborator of the Archive/Counter-Archive (https://counterarchive.ca/) project, and a member of the Ethnocultural Art Histories Research in Media group (https://www.ethnoculturalarts.com/eahr--media.html)

Keywords that highlight my research interests
visual and material cultures; cultural studies; museums and technologies; interactivity and immersion; archives; haunting and spectrality; public art and social engagement

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Maya Rae Oppenheimer joined the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University in September 2017 as Assistant Professor in Art History and now works across the Department of Studio Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies. Maya holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium (University of London).

Maya Rae Oppenheimer is a daughter, sister, aunt, plant-mother, friend and colleague who receives financial remuneration as a writer/researcher/artist/educator. She preoccupies herself with writing as social practice and the tangles of historical narratives that inform our contemporary worldviews. Structures of institutional knowledge formation and validation are often the focus of her inquiries, from museum narratives to histories of social psychology. Experimental writing, performance, radical pedagogy, wandering, DIY tactics and rogue archival inquiries are part of the tool-kit she brings to reconsidering and recalibrating histories and ways of knowing and being in the world.

She is active in curricular development for 21st century art schools and sits on various cross-university curriculum committees; she is Head of the Interdisciplinary Studies Area in the Faculty of Fine Art.

Maya holds a PhD in Humanities and Cultural Studies from the London Consortium (University of London). Before returning to Canada after a decade in London (UK), Maya: taught at the Royal College of Art, Imperial College London, and the Cass School of Art and Design; worked as a member of earnest, experimental art collectives; held various research positions at the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Research Department; began publishing and editing interdisciplinary projects, both within and beyond peer-review protocols, some of which are open access via academia.edu; served two terms as Executive Trustee for the Design History Society; showed art in sundry spaces including the Science Museum (London, UK), the Rag Factory (London, UK), GV Arts (London, UK), and Cabinet (NYC); was co-director of Metalab (London, UK) an experimental research platform running across the Royal College of Art and University of London from 2012-2017

Edith-Anne Pageot

Spécialiste des modernismes au Québec et au Canada, Edith-Anne Pageot est professeure au département d’histoire de l’art de l’UQAM. Visant le décentrement épistémologique, ses recherches s’intéressent aux logiques transculturelles et transnationales qui traversent les modes de production et d’exposition des objets d’art et d’artisanat. Elle est membre de l’IREF, du CRILCQ et du CIERA. En collaboration avec une équipe de chercheurs autochtones et allochtones, elle a coréalisé le premier MOOC, en français, sur les arts autochtones, Ohtehra' l'art autochtone aujourd'hui.

GRADUATE Research team

research assistant

David Duhamel is a MA student in art history at Université de Montréal. They completed their bachelor’s degree at UQÀM (Université du Québec à Montréal) in 2021.

David has also taken part in various exhibitions by writing in booklets and catalogues. David’s research focuses mainly on representations of speciesism in contemporary Quebecois art.

keywords that highlight my research interests
contemporary art, Quebec, animal studies, speciesism, animal ethics in art, intersectionality

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RESEARCH ASSISTANT & co-curator OF THE WPC COLLOQUIUM 2023 EXHIBITION

Lorraine Doucet Sisto (she/they) is an Art History MA student at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), where she previously completed her BA in Communications.

A Canadian of settler origin, Lorraine is currently working as a research assistant and curator for the Worlding Public Cultures (WPC) research project. Lorraine assists Professor Edith-Anne Pageot (UQAM) in mapping the history of textile arts in Quebec through her contributions to the project Une géographie des réseaux de production et de diffusion de la fibre dans l’art moderne et contemporain au Québec. Informed by critical art history, as well as decolonial and transcultural perspectives, her primary research interests are queer and feminist imaginaries, aesthetics and ethics. She is studying contemporary art practices dealing with skin that are simultaneously poetic and political.

research assistant & co-curator OF THE WPC COLLOQUIUM 2023 EXHIBITION

Manar Abo Touk (she/her) is a Syrian-born Canadian independent Art Curator and a PhD student in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Her dissertation project focuses on contemporary Syrian art post 2011. Specifically, it analyzes displacement on diasporic identities through artists in Canada, Germany, and France. Manar’s most recent positions were as the Arts Manager and Curator at Al Riwaq Art Space in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and the Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Alberta.

Manar holds an MA in Museum and Gallery Studies from Kingston University, London, UK, and a BA with double majors in History and Theory of Art and Arts Administration from the University of Ottawa. Manar has worked at the Canadian War Museum and Studio Sixty-Six Gallery in Ottawa, and the aluCine Latin Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto. She was the Arts Manager and Curator at Al Riwaq Art Space in the Kingdom of Bahrain, and most recently as the Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, Alberta.

keywords that highlight my research interests
Syrian Art, transnational art, diasporic identities, revolution and war art, global art histories

RESEARCH COORDINATOR & co-CURATOR of the wpc colloquium 2023 exhibition

Varda Nisar (she/her) is a Public Scholar and doctoral candidate in Concordia’s Department of Art History in the Faculty of Fine Arts. She has been actively involved in centering art education and community outreach in her former role as the founder of a children's art festival in Karachi, and later as the head of educational programming for the Karachi Biennale.

Varda was a 2015-16 Arthink South Asia Fellow and worked with Spark Arts for Children, as part of her secondment. In 2021, she organized and convened a speaker series titled, (Art + Micro) History: Contemporary Artistic Voices from the South, which drew attention to the specific concerns and artistic modes of resistance in Pakistan. Her current doctoral research focuses on the role that museums in Pakistan are playing in nation-building by positioning them within the global political dynamic.

keywords that highlight my research interests
National museums, Art Education, Biennales and Festivals, hegemony, postcolonialism.

former members

Ashley Raghubir is a MA student in the Department of Art History at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal and holds a Honours Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Toronto. She is the Winter 2020 Curatorial Intern at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal.

Ashley is a Research Assistant to the Concordia University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories, a core member of the Concordia’s Ethnocultural Art Histories Research (EAHR) Student Group, and a graduate student member of Concordia’s EAHR | Media (Ethnocultural Art Histories Research in Media). Her research interests are Afrofuturism in contemporary art, critical race theory, black diaspora studies, public programming as research and pedagogy, and critical curating based in social justice and activism

keywords that highlight my research interests
Afrofuturism, Black Portraiture, Critical Race Theory, Black Diaspora Studies, Transatlantic Slavery Studies, Caribbean Studies, Black Intersectional Feminism, Global Art Histories, Critical Curating, Public Programming

Dr. Barbara Clausen is Associate Professor for contemporary art and performance in the art history department at the University of Québec in Montréal (UQAM) and an independent curator. In 2010 Clausen received her PhD from the University of Vienna, Austria and has over the last ten years curated and collaborated on numerous exhibitions and performance series in Europe as well as North America, including After the Act The (Re)Presentation of Performance Art (2005) and Wieder und Wider / Again and Against: (2006) as well as thet exhibition and performance series Push and Pull I and II (2010-2011) at mumok (Museum of Modern Art Stiftung Ludwig), the Tanzquartier in Vienna as well as TATE Modern in London.

Since 2000 she has lectured and written extensively on the historiography and institutionalization of performance-based art practices and the parallel discourses surrounding the politics of the body and the archive, articulated through the site specificity of the exhibition. In 2016 she curated the first Canadian exhibition of Joan Jonas’ work, entitled From Away and the event series Affinities at DHC / Art and Phi Centre in Montreal.
Since 2014 Clausen is the director of FRQSC funded research project An Annotated Bibliography in Realtime: Performance Art in Quebec and Canada (2014-2019) as well as her current research project Keeping it Live (2018 - 2022), funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada). She is the Curatorial Research Director of the Joan Jonas Knowledge Base, which is part of The Artists Archive Initiative at New York University (2017-2020) in collaboration Glenn Wharton (Museum Studies) and Denna Engel (Computer Science). She is a co-applicant member of Hexagram UQAM Network in Montreal, and, next to her research association with the ZeM in 2018/2019, a Visiting Research Fellow at TATE Britain and a Visiting Scholar at the programme for Museum Studies at NYU from 2018 - 2020.
Barbara Clausen’s research is dedicated to thinking about performance’s representational politics as a hybrid art form in the tension field of the live and the mediated. One of her main objectives is to study the political and cultural impact of live and performance based art practices in the visual arts as an increasingly fluid medial entity that oscillates between affect driven agency and conceptual site-specificity - asking how the ecologies and networks of artistic interests, curatorial choices, and institutional and ideological politics at play, are anchored in the reality and imaginary of the exhibition as a liminal site, fed by the desire for immediacy and authentic experience as much as driven by the instability of the archive and the projected accessibility of the infinite.

keywords that highlight my research interests
Contemporary Art and Performance, Curating, historiography, institutionalization of performance-based art practices, parallel discourses surrounding the politics of the body and the archive

Felicia F. Leu is currently enrolled as a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She studied Psychology (B.Sc., LMU München), Art History and Languages, Literatures, Cultures in Munich, Vienna and Paris (B.A. & M.A., LMU München).

Linking psychology and art history, her primary research interest lies in the potential transformative effects of art on its audience. Presently, Felicia’s research concentrates on the multidirectional reception mechanisms of contemporary, socially engaged performances and their local and global performative strategies as a means of communication. She is part of the research project KEEPING IT LIVE: Performance Art Between Archive and Exhibition, directed by Prof. Barbara Clausen. Felicia‘s work is also nourished by exhibition practice; she interned internationally in curatorial teams at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2019), the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2018) and the Haus der Kunst in Munich (2016). In 2020, she curated her first exhibition in collaboration with the Franz Marc Museum (Kochel am See) at the Center for Advanced Studies (CAS LMU) in Munich, Germany.

keywords that highlight my research interests
Performance and Participation, Reception Mechanisms in Contemporary Art, Transnationalism, Curating, Social Psychology and Art

WORLDING PUBLIC CULTURES MONTREAL TEAM ​