GLOBAL ASIA/PACIFIC ART EXCHANGE 2019
Conference and Working Group Participants
Conference Presenters (& Working Group Participants)
Noelani Arista
Noelani Arista (Kanaka Maoli) is an Associate Professor of Hawaiian and American History at the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa. Her areas of expertise include Hawaiian governance, customary knowledge, and knowledge systems, Hawaiian religious, legal and intellectual history. Her research, writing and translation work investigates and seeks to exemplify prototypical Hawaiian epistemologies and methods of intellectual production. Her current historical work furthers the persistence of Hawaiian textual archives through multiple digital mediums including gaming, Indigenous Protocols for Artificial Intelligence, and building digital archives which are context rich. Alexandra Chang
Alexandra Chang a curator, writer, and arts scholar. She is currently Curator of Special Projects and Director of Global Arts Programs at the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University, where she organizes the Climate Working Group (CWG) and directs the NYU Global Asia/Pacific Art Exchange (GAX). In Fall 2019, she will take on the role of Associate Professor of Practice at Rutgers University, Newark's Art, Culture and Media Department and Clement A. Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience. Chang is also director of the Virtual Asian American Art Museum and Co-Founding Editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), Brill (Leiden). She is the co-founder of the College Art Association’s affiliated society the Diasporic Asian Art Network (DAAN). She recently curated "Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art" at the Chinese American Museum and California African American Museum for the Getty's PSTII, Sept 2017-Mar 2018; "Dark Roads: Zarina Hashmi" at the A/P/A Institute at NYU, Oct 2017-Feb 2018; (ex)CHANGE: History Place Presence, a city-wide collaboration including 25 newly commissioned works with six public artworks across Philadelphia with the Asian Arts Initiative throughout 2018, and "Ming Fay: Beyond Nature" at Sapar Contemporary in New York City, May-June 2019. She is the author of Envisioning Diaspora: Asian American Visual Art Collectives from Godzilla, Godzookie, to the Barnstormers (2008 Timezone 8) and editor of Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art (Duke University Press, 2018). Stephanie Cheung
Stephanie Cheung is a Hong Kong-based curator, writer and artist specializing in process-based, participatory and collaborative projects. She takes open form as a format to explore dialogues, and shapes perception through light touches on tactile materials. Art to her is a practice of care, in which she explores more conscientious ways to inhabit the world. Cheung received an Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2015, and in the same year completed Message in a Bottle with support of the Angela Gill Johnson Memorial Award from the Bamboo Curtain Studio in Taipei. Her writings have been published in international journals such as World Art, CAA Reviews, Asian Art News, etc. As an artist, she has presented site-specific projects in America, England, Japan, Korea and Taiwan. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of the Arts London. Renata Critton-Papp
Renata Critton-Papp is a second-year Art History major at Concordia University in Tiohtiá:ke/Montréal. She is a recipient of the 2019 Concordia Undergraduate Student Research Award. Moving between research, visual arts, and creative writing, her practice revolves around documenting emotion, memory, and healing through creation. She is interested in studying intersectionality, accessibility, and reconciliation within art institutions. Sara Nicole England
Sara Nicole England is an art historian, arts organizer, and white settler based in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal). She holds an MA in Art History from Concordia University and a BFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University. Sara’s writing has been published in Public Art Dialogue (forthcoming), Espace art actuel, Invitation by Art Mûr, and a Bloomsbury volume on design and agency (forthcoming), among others. She is the Research Coordinator for Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, where she co-organizes the Indigenous Digital Art Archive, a living archive and online database of Indigenous new media art and ephemera. Léuli Eshrāghi
Dr Léuli Eshrāghi (he/ia) is an Australian artist and curator of Sāmoan, Persian and other ancestries, and a Horizon/Indigenous Futures Postdoctoral Fellow, Concordia University. Léuli’s performances, installations, writing and curatorial projects centre on embodied knowledges, ceremonial-political practices, language renewal and hopeful futures throughout the Great Ocean. Léuli’s postdoctoral research-creation project, Desired and Desiring, reflects, critiques and imagines an Indigenous video art museum focusing on gender, body, and desire, developed across two public visual arts organizations in Sydney, Australia. Curatorial projects include Pōuliuli at West Space, Melbourne and Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, Honolulu (2017), Ua numi le fau at Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne (2016). Recent publications include chapters in Sovereign Words: Indigenous Art, Curation and Criticism (2018) and Associations: Creative Practice and Research (2018). Léuli’s works have been presented at Sharjah Biennial 14: Journey beyond the Echo Chamber (2019), Cairns Regional Art Gallery (2018), Open Space, Victoria (2017), 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (2016), Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland (2016), and Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne (2016). Nima Esmailpour
Nima Esmailpour is an artist, art historian, and the co-founder of the Taklif : تکلیف collective . He graduated from Goldsmiths,(University of London) with an MA in Art and Politics and is currently pursuing a PhD in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Taklif has produced and participated in numerous critical engagement initiatives, including Common Aliens: Diaspora in Time (Studio XX, Montreal, 2016), Disorienting Diaspora: Shorts by Brown Queer Artists from the Canadian Archive (RIDM Festival, Montreal, 2017), Conversations at the Edge (SAIC, Chicago, 2019), Utopia as Method (Regart, Quebec City, 2018), What is Critical Curating? (RACAR, 2018), Ideas of Femininity (FOFA Gallery, Montreal, 2018), and Syphon 5.1: My life is not your _____. (Modern Fuel, Kingston, 2019). Beatrice Glow
Beatrice Glow is an interdisciplinary and multi-sensory artist leveraging participatory performance, painting, experiential technology, olfactory art, installations and video to shift dominant narratives. She is currently a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and Smack Mellon Studio Program Artist. Glow's work is an incubator for applied research of public engagement. Recently, through the American Arts Incubator and with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, her focus has been on amplifying Indigenous voices through public art and virtual and augmented reality works in allyship with Indigenous environmental stewardship. Recent activities include solo exhibitions at Duke House, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile; Cuchifritos Gallery, New York; and Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; group shows at Honolulu Biennial 2017; Park Avenue Armory, New York; and Galeri Nasional Indonesia; and a Duke University Press’ Cultural Politics Journal artist feature. As a Hemispheric Institute Council Member, she co-founded the Performing Asian/Americas: Converging Movements workgroup. Jessica Hébert
Jessica Hébert is an artist and librarian, specialist of the print collection at Artexte. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from Concordia University and a Masters of Library and Information Studies from McGill University. Since 2013, she has been an active member of Art Libraries Association of North America (ARLIS) and served as president of the Montreal-Quebec-Ottawa chapter in 2017. She began working at Artexte in 2014, and is interested in the creation and collection of artists’ books and zines, as well as the documentation of ephemeral artworks. Austin Henderson
Austin Henderson is an artist and MA candidate in Art History at Concordia University. He holds a BFA in Visual Art from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, with a Minor in Art History. His current research is concerned with queer theory, material culture, and the intersections between contemporary art practice, design, and popular American cinema. His artwork has been exhibited in group shows across Canada and the US. Heather Igloliorte
Heather Igloliorte (Inuk) is the University Research Chair in Indigenous Art History and Community Engagement at Concordia University, where she is also the Special Advisor to the Provost on Advancing Indigenous Knowledges, Co-Director of the Initiative for Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology with Professor Jason Edward Lewis, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Art History. She has been an independent curator for fourteen years - she currently has three exhibitions touring across Canada and is working on the inaugural exhibition of the Inuit Art Centre opening in Winnipeg in 2020 - and is the Principal Investigator of the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership SSHRC Partnership Grant which aims to increase the number of other Inuit working in agential positions across the arts. Alice Ming Wai Jim
Alice Ming Wai Jim is a Professor of Contemporary Art and University Research Chair in Ethnocultural Art Histories at Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. She is founding co-editor-in-chief, with Alexandra Chang, of the international scholarly journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (ADVA), published by Brill (Leiden,NL) in association with the Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art (Concordia University) and the Asian/Pacific/American Institute (New York University). As an art historian, curator and cultural organizer, her research interests include contemporary ethnocultural and global art histories, media arts, international art exhibitions, and critical curatorial studies. She has curated numerous exhibitions of artists from global Asian, Asian Canadian, African Canadian and Indigenous communities and organized major scholarly events within academic settings and for the broader arts community in Canada and internationally. In 2018, she co-edited the fall special issue of RACAR, “What is Critical Curating?” Recipient of the 2015 Centre de documentation d'Artexte Award for Research in Contemporary Art, Jim is co-convener of the 2019 Global Asia/Pacific Exchange (GAX), Asian Indigenous Relationalities in Contemporary Art, in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal). Her current research projects include the history of Asian Canadian art and Afro-Asian Indigenous futurist aesthetics. Yuki Kihara
A native of Sāmoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives through visual arts, dance and curatorial practice, engaging with postcolonial history and representation and how they intersect with race, gender, spirituality and sexual politics. Kihara lives and works in Sāmoa. The Metropolitan Museum of Art featured Kihara solo exhibition, Living Photographs, in 2008, and subsequently acquired her works for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works are also in other major collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the British Museum and Giorgio Armani, as well as in numerous exhibitions including the Asia Pacific Triennial (2002 and 2015), Auckland Triennial (2009), Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013), Daegu Photo Biennale (2014), Honolulu Biennial (2017) and Bangkok Art Biennale (2018). Kihara is a research fellow at the National Museums of World Cultures in The Netherlands. Kama La Mackerel
Kama La Mackerel (they//them) is multi-disciplinary artist, writer, educator and cultural mediator, from Mauritius, who now lives in Montréal, Canada. Their work is grounded in the exploration of justice, love, healing, decoloniality, and self- and collective empowerment. Kama’s artistic practice spans across textile, visual, digital, poetic and performative work, and is at once narratological and theoretical, at once personal and political. A firm believer that artistic practices have the power to build resilience, to heal, and to act as a form of resistance to the status quo, their work articulates an anticolonial praxis through cultural production. Lamackerel.net Marissa Largo
Marissa Largo is a researcher, artist, curator, and educator. She earned her PhD in Social Justice Education from OISE, University of Toronto (2018). She is a recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Research on the Education of Asian and Pacific Americans (REAPA) special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Her book manuscript, Unsettling Imaginaries examines Filipinx artists who respond to the racist and colonial discourses that persist in Canada through their artistic practices. Largo’s projects have been presented in venues and events across Canada, such as the A Space Gallery (2017 & 2012), Open Gallery of OCAD University (2015), Royal Ontario Museum (2015), WorldPride Toronto (2014), and MAI (Montreal, arts interculturels) (2007). Largo is co-editor of the anthology Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos and Canadian Imaginaries (Northwestern University Press 2017) and serves as the Canada Area Editor of the Journal of Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas. Việt Lê
Việt Lê is an artist, writer, and curator. Lê is an Assistant Professor in Visual Studies at California College of the Arts. He has been published in positions: asia critique; Crab Orchard Review; American Quarterly; Amerasia Journal; Art Journal; and the anthologies Writing from the Perfume River; Strange Cargo; The Spaces Between Us; Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Art; among others. Recent solo exhibitions include sonic spiritualities (Vargas Museum, 2020) lovebang! (Kellogg University Art Gallery, Los Angeles 2016), vestige (H Gallery Bangkok 2015), tan nÁRT cõi lòng | heARTbreak! (Nhà Sàn Collective Hà Nội). Lê has presented his work at The Banff Centre, Alberta, Canada; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA; DoBaeBacSa Gallery, Seoul, Korea; Japan Foundation, Việt Nam; 1a Space, Hong Kong; Bangkok Art & Cultural Center (BACC), Thailand; Civitella Ranieri, Italy; Shanghai Biennale, China; Rio Gay Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; among other venues. White Gaze, an art book (poetry, images, performance) in collaboration with Michelle Dizon and Faith Wilding is published by Sming Sming Books & Objects (February 2018). Lê co-curated humor us (with Leta Ming and Yong Soon Min; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, LA, CA, 2008), transPOP: Korea Việt Nam Remix (with Yong Soon Min; Seoul, Sài Gòn, Irvine, San Francisco, 2008-09), the 2012 Taipei Kuandu Biennale and Love in the Time of War (UC Santa Barbara and SF Camerawork). Vietle.net Luchia Meihua Lee
Luchia Meihua Lee is a New York-based curator interested in global contemporary art in all media, and has curated numerous exhibitions with indigenous contemporary artists and environmental art. Luchia is Executive Director of the Taiwanese American Arts Council, whose mission is forging links between Taiwanese American art communities and other parts of the American art scene. She co-edited Zhang Hongtu: Expanding Visions of a Shrinking World co-published by Duke University Press and Queens Museum. She was chief curator of the National Taiwanese Museum of Fine Arts, and deputy curator at Taipei Gallery TECO in New York City. Earlier, served as cultural specialist at the Council for Cultural Affairs (now Cultural Ministry) in Taiwan. Luchia has doctoral studies in Art History and critical studies in CUNY and New York University and she earned an M. Phil in History of Art and Architecture from Trinity College, Dublin, studying medieval manuscripts. Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭
Yen-Chao Lin 林延昭 is a Montreal-based multidisciplinary artist. Commenting on the impermanence of existence through intuitive play, collaboration and scavenging, her practice explores divination arts, folk religion, ecology and social permaculture. A self-described postmodern archivist, and natural history enthusiast, she is an avid collector of all things from found family records to Victorian ephemera and biological specimens. Her works have been shown at Berlinale (Berlin), articule (Montreal), Art Metropole (Toronto), Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montreal), OBORO (Montreal), SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art (Montreal), among others. Dan Taulapapa McMullin
Dan Taulapapa McMullin is an artist and poet from Sāmoa Amelika (American Samoa). The Bat and other early works received a 1997 Poets&Writers Award from The Writers Loft. His book of poems Coconut Milk (2013) was on the American Library Association Rainbow List Top Ten Books of the Year. In 2018, his book Samoan Queer Lives, co-edited with Yuki Kihara, was published by Little Island Press of Aotearoa. Taulapapa's artwork has shown at the Metropolitan Museum, De Young Museum, Oakland Museum, Bishop Museum, NYU's /A/P/A Gallery, iBiennale Honolulu, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the United Nations. His film Sinalela won the 2002 Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival Best Short Film Award. 100 Tikis is an art appropriation video at the intersection of tiki kitsch and indigenous sovereignty, and was the opening night film selection of the 2016 Présence Autochtone First Peoples Festival in Montréal; and was an Official Selection in the Fifo Tahiti International Oceania Documentary Film Festival; and at Pacifique Festival in Rochefort, France. Taulapapa's art studio and writing practice is based in Hudson, New York, where he lives with his partner. He is currently working on a novel. Margo Machida
Margo Machida, Ph.D. is Professor Emerita of Art History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut. Born and raised in Hawai‘i, she is a scholar, independent curator, and cultural critic specializing in Asian American art and visual culture. Her book, Unsettled Visions: Contemporary Asian American Artists and the Social Imaginary (Duke University Press, 2009) received the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas (Brill). Publications include: “Pacific Itineraries: Islands and Oceanic Imaginaries in Contemporary Asian American Art” (ADVA Journal, 2017); “Trans-Pacific Sitings: The Roving Imagery of Lynne Yamamoto” (Third Text, 2014); “Devouring Hawai‘i: Food, Consumption, and Contemporary Art” in Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (NYU Press, 2013); and “Convergent Conversations – The Nexus of Asian American Art” in A Companion to Asian Art and Architecture (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). |
Francis Maravillas
Francis Maravillas is Assistant Professor in the Critical and Curatorial Studies of Contemporary Art (CCSCA) program at the National Taipei University of Education. His research interests focus on contemporary art and visual culture in Asia and Australia, curatorial and exhibition histories, socially engaged and performative practices in art. He is currently writing a book on the aesthetics and politics of food in contemporary Asian art. He has published journal articles, book chapters and exhibition catalogue essays on the Asia-Pacific Triennial exhibition series, Asian artists in the diaspora in Australia, and food and hospitality in contemporary Asian art. He recently co-curated (with Marnie Badham) Bruised Food: A Living Laboratory (2019) at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, using methods of curation and public pedagogy to frame the discourse of the politics and aesthetics of food as employed by contemporary social practice artists. He is area editor (Asia-Pacific) of the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal. He was previously a board member of the 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney, Australia. Jane C. Mi
As an ocean engineer and an artist, Jane Chang Mi assesses the post-colonial ocean environment through an interdisciplinary and research-based lens. She examines the narratives associated with the underwater landscape considering the past, present, and future. Mi most often focuses on the occupation and militarization of the Pacific Ocean by the United States as her livelihood as an ocean engineer would have reinforced the legacy of the American military complex. The ocean has always played a large role in her life; she has been an avid Scuba diver for over 25 years. She helped Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute develop the Eye-in-the-Sea one of the first long term underwater observation systems. She was also the inaugural artist in residence at the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, researching the pre-contact history of Pearl Harbor. She is currently based out of both Honolulu and Los Angeles. Ossie Michelin
Ossie Michelin is a queer Inuk journalist from North West River, Labrador. Son of a missionary nurse and a Labrador trapper, Ossie comes from a long line of storytellers. His work can be found in various news outlets and magazines such as APTN National News, the CBC, Canadian Geographic, and more. Ossie writes about Indigenous issues, the environment, and the North with a capital N. Kari Noe
Kari Noe is a graduate research assistant at the Laboratory for Advanced Visualization and Applications (LAVA) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is pursuing a M.S. in Computer Science. Currently she works with a team of fellow programmers on Kilo Hōkū, a virtual reality simulation designed to teach the basics of modern Hawaiian wayfinding to introductory level students. She is also working on Digitizing Detours, a virtual reality experience meant to digitize Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i, a collection of essays and stories by Hawaiian artists, scholars, and activists. Aside from programming, her other passion lies with art. As an undergraduate she also received a degree in Animation. Her senior film, Kai and Honua was work-shopped in the 2016 Sundance Native Shorts Lab and was screened at the Hō'ea 2018 Kanaka Maoli Film Showcase, 2018 Hawaiʻi International Film Festival ACM night, and the 2019 Cultural Animation Film Festival. Victoria Nolte
Victoria Nolte is a doctoral candidate in Carleton University’s interdisciplinary Cultural Mediations program. A historian of contemporary art, her research focuses on the visual cultures of Asian diasporas in North America. Her doctoral work examines issues of historical representation and practices of place-making in installation and media works by Asian Canadian artists. Broadly, she is interested in the ways in which artists have taken up migration as a subject in their work, as well as how diasporic knowledges challenge the centre-periphery logic (and area-specific focus) of art history in a global context. Her research was recently published in the Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas journal special issue on Asian Canadian visual culture (Spring 2018). She also works as the Graduate Coordinator for the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis (CTCA) at Carleton University. Edith-Anne Pageot
Edith-Anne Pageot is professor of modern Art history at UQAM (University of Quebec in Montreal). Her research focuses on cross-cultural spaces, gender and geographies in Native and Non-Native Art in Canada (1900-1975). She is currently leading a research project entitled La culture artistique au Collège Manitou. Agentivité et stratégies d’autodétermination, financed by UQAM’s New Orientations Program and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Examples of her recent publications include L'art autochtone à l'aune du discours critique dans les revues spécialisées en arts visuels au Canada. Les cas de Sakahàn et de Beat Nation (Muséologies, 2018), Figure de l’indiscipline. Domingo Cisneros, un parcours artistique atypique (RACAR, 2017), “Postcolonial Territorial Landmarks within Canada’s Multiculturalism: The Myth of Virility” (Canada: Landmarks and Landscapes, 2017). Malissa Phung
A Professor in the School of Communication and Literary Studies at Sheridan College (Ontario, Canada), Malissa Phung is an uninvited guest on the territories of the Huron-Wendat, Mississauga, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Her research and teaching areas of expertise include Asian North American literary and cultural studies, Asian diaspora and postcolonial studies, Indigenous studies, settler colonial studies, and critical race studies. She has published articles in peer-reviewed journals such as Postcolonial Text, Canadian Literature, Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures of the Americas, and Verge (spring 2019), as well as the essay, “Are People of Colour Settlers Too?” in the Aboriginal Healing Foundation series, Cultivating Canada. While her doctoral research examines representations of Chinese labour and Sino-Indigenous relations in Chinese Canadian literature and documentaries, her new book project builds on this earlier work by turning to the literary and cultural depictions of these intimacies by Indigenous and Asian North American authors and artists through the framework of kinship and indebtedness. Mikhel Proulx
Mikhel Proulx researches contemporary art and digital culture. Mikhel is a PhD student and faculty member in the Department of Art History at Concordia University, Montreal. His research considers Queer and Indigenous artists working with networked media. He is a Canada Graduate Scholar and a Jarislowsky Foundation Doctoral Fellow in Canadian Art History. His writing has been published widely, and he has curated exhibitions across Canada, Europe and the Middle East. Tyler Russell
Tyler Russell is a curator and arts administrator inspired by art’s capacity to facilitate complex communication within and between communities. Executive Director/Curator of Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art from 2014 to 2018 his recent exhibitions include Chang En Man’s As Heavy as a Feather and Wen-li Chen’s To My Unborn Child. These solo exhibitions by Taiwanese indigenous artists give artistic space to questions surrounding the complexity of rural-urban, settler-indigenous dynamics in indigenous rights and environmental activism in the former, and the struggles of memory and intergenerational cultural transference for carriers of endangered cultural heritage in the latter. Russell is currently the Executive Director of The Rotary Centre for the Arts in Kelowna, BC. He holds an MA in New Intermedia Art from Tokyo National University of the Arts and a BA in International Development Studies from Dalhousie University, and is currently enrolled in a Cultural Studies PhD program at Queen’s University. Jason Sikoak
Nunatsiavut Inuit artist, Jason Sikoak, was born and raised in The Big Land, Labrador, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Sikoak’s love of art began as a child, watching his uncle, Jack Mugford. Wishing he could command the materials as his uncle did, Sikoak vowed to learn as much as he could. Sikoak is currently completing his BFA at Concordia University. Cheryl Sim
Cheryl Sim is Managing Director and Curator at Phi Foundation for Contemporary Art. Recent exhibitions include Pièces de résistance by Yinka Shonibare (CE) RA, Points de départby Bharti Kher and GROWING FREEDOM by Yoko Ono. Sim is also an artist whose practice incorporates her background in media studies and research on contemporary art practices. Her video and installation work has been presented in exhibitions and festivals in North America and Europe. In 2015 she completed a PhD in the études et pratiques des arts program at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). Sim has presented papers, organized panels and served as moderator at conferences in Europe and Canada including Fashion, the 84th Anglo-American Conference of Historians and Re-Create: Theories, Methods, Practices of Research-Creation in the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. Her book “Wearing the Cheongsam: Dress and Culture in a Chinese Diaspora” will be launched this fall by Bloomsbury Academic. Skawennati
Skawennati makes art that addresses history, the future, and change from her perspective as an urban Kanien’kehá:ka woman and as a cyberpunk avatar. Her work has been widely presented in both group exhibitions and solo shows and is included in both public and private collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada and the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. Born in Kahnawà:ke Mohawk Territory, Skawennati graduated with a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal, where she is based. She is Co-Director of Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), a research-creation network of artists and academics who investigate and create Indigenous virtual environments. Their Skins workshops in Aboriginal Storytelling and Experimental Digital Media are aimed at empowering youth. In 2015 they launched IIF, the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Anna Kazumi Stahl
Anna Kazumi Stahl holds a PhD in Comparative Literature (UC Berkeley) and is a fiction writer based in Argentina. Her critical work and her fiction both explore South-South and East Asian-South American transnational experience and strategies for narrating inter-cultural sensibilities. Working in an acquired language (Spanish), she has written two books of fiction and has a third (non-fiction) book forthcoming with Malba Cuadernos in Buenos Aires. Her fiction has been published in Latin America, Australia, Europe, Japan, and the USA. She is currently completing a novel set in a zone of Buenos Aires historically impacted by immigration. Stahl is the Director of NYU's global program in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In addition, she has served as academic coordinator for John M. Coetzee's project of twice yearly colloquia on "Literatures of the Southern Hemisphere" at Universidad Nacional de San Martin. She is a Board Member of the Fulbright Commission of Argentina. Kanwal Syed
Kanwal Syed completed her under-graduation as a studio-artist, with major in sculpture from National College of Arts, Pakistan. In 2012, she completed her M.A in Art History from University Sains Malaysia, entitled “Caught in The Middle: Socio-Political Imageries in Contemporary Art in Pakistan Post 9/11 (2001-2013).” She is the author of two published texts in peer-reviewed international journals. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate and a part-time faculty in the Department of Art History at Concordia University. Recipient of Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (FRQSC) research grant 2018-2019, her research interests encompass Pakistani Art with an emphasis on nuanced artistic representations of urban female subjectivities in Contemporary Pakistani art discourse post 9/11 and ongoing War on Terror. John Tain
John Tain is Head of Research at Asia Art Archive, where he leads a team of researchers based in Hong Kong, Delhi, and Shanghai, with projects spanning all of Asia. Previously, he was a curator for modern and contemporary collections at the Getty Research Institute, where he developed collections related to artists such as Ed Ruscha, Allan Sekula, Faith Wilding, and Tetsumi Kudo. His writings on Rirkrit Tiravanija, Wu Tsang, Charles Gaines and Kara Walker, among others, have appeared in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Flash Art, Art Review Asia, and in other publications, and he is an editor for Afterall’s Exhibition Histories series. His exhibition, co-curated with Jasmine Alinder, Someday, Chicago, on the Japanese-American photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto, was on view this past fall at the DePaul Art Museum as part of the Terra Foundation for American Art’s “Art Design Chicago” initiative. Francesca Tarocco
A scholar of modern and contemporary Sinophone cultural and visual history and Buddhism, Tarocco is the author of several books including The Cultural Practices of Modern Chinese Buddhism: Attuning the Dharma (Routledge, 2011) and Altar Modern: Buddhism and Modernity in China (forthcoming). She curated, with Anna Greenspan, the interpretive humanities program All Tomorrow’s Parties 会聚未来 at RAM Museum (Shanghai, 2012-2013) and organized, with Alexandra Chang, the international conference Transcultural Visualities: Global Asian Art (2013). She is a member of GAX since its inception and recently co-curated the exhibition Intimacies and Imagined Futures: Video and Performance Practices together with Alexandra Chang and Nabi Nara (Berlin, 2018). Tarocco teaches at NYU Shanghai and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and writes for Frieze, Flash Art International and other art magazines. Alisi Telengut
Alisi Telengut is a visual artist, animator, and an award winning filmmaker based in Montreal. She creates animation frame by frame under the camera, with painting as the medium, to generate movement and explore handmade and painterly visuals for her films. Her recent works received awards at the 24th Stockholm Film Festival, the 36th and the 37th Montreal World Film Festival and Canada International Film Festival. In addition to being screened at Sundance, Slamdance, Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), and various worldwide film venues and exhibitions as animation and moving image artworks, these films have also contributed to ethnographic and ethnocultural research archives. Josh Tengan
Josh Tengan is a Honolulu-based independent curator and arts project manager. Since 2015, he has worked with Native Hawaiian and Hawaiʻi-based artists and cultural practitioners, through the arts non-profit Puʻuhonua Society, to deliver Hawaiʻi’s largest annual thematic contemporary art exhibition, CONTACT, which offers a critical and comprehensive survey of local contemporary visual culture. He was the Assistant Curator of the Honolulu Biennial 2019, To Make Wrong / Right / Now. He holds a Curatorial Studies MA with Distinction from Newcastle University (UK) and a BA in Fine Art from Westmont College. Henry Tsang
Henry Tsang’s projects employ video, photography, language, interactive media, sculptural elements and convivial events to explore the spatial politics of history, language, community, food and cultural translation through global flows of people, culture and capital. Projects include: Tansy Point, a video installation of the site of the 1851 treaty signings by the Chinook peoples and the US government that were never ratified; RIOT FOOD HERE, a public offering of food reflecting on Vancouver’s Anti-Asian Riots in 1907; Maraya, in collaboration with Glen Lowry and M. Simon Levin, that investigates the reappearance of Vancouver’s False Creek in Dubai as the Dubai Marina; video installations Orange County, and Olympus, shot in California, Beijing, Torino and Vancouver, that explore overlapping urban and socio-political spaces; and Welcome to the Land of Light, a public artwork along Vancouver's seawall that underscores the 19th Century trade language Chinook Jargon and the English that replaced it. Henry is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art & Design in Vancouver, Canada. Daina Warren
Daina Warren is from the Akamihk (Cree) Nation in Maskwacis (Bear Hills), AB. She was awarded two Canada Council's Aboriginal Curatorial Residencies the first to work with grunt gallery, Vancouver BC (2000-2001) and a second residency at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario (2010-2011). She has a BFA from the Emily Carr University of Art (ECUAD) and Design (2003) and an MA from UBC (2012). Warren was awarded the 2015 Emily Award from Emily Carr University and was selected as one of six Indigenous women curators as part of the Canada Council for the Arts Delegation to participate in the International First Nations Curators Exchange that took place in Australia (2015), New Zealand (2016), and Canada (2017). Her most recent accomplishment was winning the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellency in 2018. She is currently the Director of Urban Shaman Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba. |
Working Group Participants
May Chew
May Chew is an Assistant Professor at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and Department of Art History at Concordia University. 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. Amy Dickson
Amy Dickson is an emerging curator and doctoral student in the Art History program at Concordia University. Her research focuses on the practice of Inuit artists within urban spaces and the role of art in the construction of place. Amy holds a BA and an MA in Art History, both from Carleton University. Her writing has been featured in Inuit Art Quarterly and esse arts + opinions. Recently, she co-curated an exhibition of contemporary circumpolar art, Among All These Tundras, with Heather Igloliorte and Charissa Von Harringa. Beatrice Glow
Beatrice Glow is an interdisciplinary and multi-sensory artist leveraging participatory performance, painting, experiential technology, olfactory art, installations and video to shift dominant narratives. She is currently a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and Smack Mellon Studio Program Artist. Glow's work is an incubator for applied research of public engagement. Recently, through the American Arts Incubator and with the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, her focus has been on amplifying Indigenous voices through public art and virtual and augmented reality works in allyship with Indigenous environmental stewardship. Recent activities include solo exhibitions at Duke House, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de Chile; Cuchifritos Gallery, New York; and Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; group shows at Honolulu Biennial 2017; Park Avenue Armory, New York; and Galeri Nasional Indonesia; and a Duke University Press’ Cultural Politics Journal artist feature. As a Hemispheric Institute Council Member, she co-founded the Performing Asian/Americas: Converging Movements workgroup. Michelle Gewurtz
Michelle Gewurtz is Curator at the Ottawa Art Gallery and Adjunct Research Professor in the School for Studies in Arts & Culture at Carleton University. Her research interests explore the convergence of gender politics and creative identity in historical and contemporary art. Recent exhibitions she has curated include the large-scale survey show Àdisòkàmagan/Nous connaîtreun peu nous-mêmes/We’ll All Become Stories that inaugurated the OAG’s purpose-built facility (2018); Howie Tsui: Retainers of Anarchy and Cheryl Pagurek: Connect. She is the author of Molly Lamb Bobak: Life and Work (2019), an e-book commissioned by the Art Canada Institute. Her upcoming projects include a Contemporary Art Festival for the Ottawa-Gatineau region (2021) and a group exhibition entitled Facing Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore (Fall 2019), which features the work of Dayna Danger, Zanele Muholi, Mark Clintberg and others. The curatorial thesis of Facing … explores artistic practice as radical activism while raising questions regarding intersectional and genderqueer identity in global and transhistorical contexts. Surabhi Ghosh
Surabhi Ghosh is an artist and educator based in Montreal, Quebec. Her current work investigates the transmission of culture to diasporic people, specifically South Asian immigrants and their descendants in North America. She uses textiles, patterns, and site-responsive installations to materialize contradictory narratives which begin and end in her own experiences. Recently, her work has been exhibited at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle, Stewart Hall Art Gallery in Montreal, SPACE Gallery in Portland, ME, and Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Ghosh received her MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in Fabric Design from the University of Georgia. She is currently Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Fibres & Material Practices at Concordia University. Surabhighosh.com Ayumi Goto
Ayumi Goto is a performance apprentice (year 6), currently based in Toronto, traditional territories of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Seneca, and Mississaugas of the Credit River. Born in Canada, she sometimes draws upon her Japanese heritage and language to investigate notions of national culturalism, senses of belonging, and activism in her creative practice. She enjoys working in collaboration with artists, scholars, and communities writ large to explore creatively and critically notions of collective responsibility and relational ethics. She has performed public interventions in Berlin, London, and Kyoto, as well as focusing on developing human-nonhuman interconnections through performances in rural and forested areas. Ayumi has cobbled together a performance apprenticeship in response to the works and lives of Cree singer-songwriter and multidisciplinary artist, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Siksika multi-media artist, Adrian Stimson, and Tahltan performance artist/maker and best friend, Peter Morin. She is interested in learning more about Asian/Indigenous relations and all that this might entail. Itzayana Gutierrez
Itzayana Gutierrez (they/she) is a print culture scholar, curator and artist with Nahua, Chinese and Filipino ancestries. They are a PhD candidate in the Communication Studies program at McGill University, their dissertation focuses on anti-Chinese violence in Latin American comics and graphic totalitarianism. She holds a MA in Art History from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and a BA in Cultural History from the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM). Their most recent publication is “Remediating Kaliman: Digital Evolutions of Eugenic Agents” for Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures in the Americas (2019). Currently she is the archivist and curator in residence of Cabaret Commons Critical Practice (CCCP), working with the annual queer performance festival Le Boudoir (1994-2016). They were part of the curatorial crew of “Return Voyage: The China Galleon and the Baroque in Mexico, 1565-1815” at Barroco Museo Internacional (BMI). Her artistic practice includes graphic design, cartooning, and performance acts of deep mourning integrating music and dance. Charissa von Harringa
Charissa von Harringa is a PhD student in Art History at Concordia University in Montréal, Quebec. Her academic focus lies at the intersection of several fields including, Circumpolar, Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Performance Studies. Her doctoral research aims to develop a more profound analysis of the shifting agencies and aesthetic dimensions of Greenlandic-Inuit and Sámi conceptions of tradition and modernity through the writings, photographs and performances of Anne Birthe-Hove, Jessie Kleeman and Marja Helander in their expanded institutional contexts and interactive domains, as they are inscribed in art historical research, operate between bounded geo-cultural space, and as they reformulate categories of belonging, self/world, culture, and nation in 21st century negotiations of sovereignty. Charissa holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from New York University (2007) and a master’s degree from Concordia University (2016) in Art History. She is the co-curator of the international circumpolar exhibition, Among All These Tundras (2018) presented at the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery (Montreal, QC), and is an affiliate of Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership Partnership Grant under the direction of Dr. Heather Igloliorte (Concordia University, Montreal). Jason Edward Lewis
Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media poet, artist, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. Along with the artist Skawennati, he co-directs Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace, Skins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Lewis' creative and production work has been featured at Ars Electronica, Mobilefest, Elektra, Urban Screens, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, and FILE, among other venues, and has been recognized with the inaugural Robert Coover Award for Best Work of Electronic Literature, two Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions, several imagineNATIVE Best New Media awards and six solo exhibitions. He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Cherokee, Hawaiian and Samoan. |
Jacqueline Lo
Professor Jacqueline Lo is Chair of Academic Board of The Australian National University. She is also Associate Dean (International) for the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Executive Director of the Centre for European Studies. Her research focuses on issues of race, colonialism, diaspora and the interaction of cultures and communities across ethnic, national and regional borders. She is the Founding Chair of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network. susan pui san lok
Dr susan pui san lok is an artist, writer and academic based in London. Her work ranges across moving image, installation, sound, performance and text. Projects include solo exhibitions in the UK at Firstsite (2019), CFCCA (2016, 2006, 1996), QUAD (2015), Winchester Discovery Centre (2012), Beaconsfield (2006), and commissions for Film and Video Umbrella, De La Warr Pavilion, BFI Southbank and Cornerhouse/BBC Big Screen. International projects include the Diaspora Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), Deviant Practice at Van Abbemuseum, NL (2016-17, research residency), Asia Time, the 1st Asia Biennial/5th Guangzhou Triennial (2015-16), and Faster Higher (2014, solo show at Montreal Arts Interculturels) (2014). She was Co-Investigator on the AHRC Black Artists and Modernism research project (2015-18), led by University of the Arts London (UAL) in partnership with Middlesex University. She joined UAL in June 2018, to lead on the development of a new institute for decolonising arts. Michelle McGeough
Originally from Amiskwaciwâskahikan, Michelle McGeough is a Métis scholar and artist who currently resides and works on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) First Nation. Prior to accepting her current position as an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia, she attended the University of New Mexico, where she received a PhD in Native American Art History. Dr. McGeough also has a B.F.A. from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, A.F.A. from Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico and B.Ed. from the University of Alberta. Dr. McGeough’s research interests have focused on the indigenous two-spirit identity. Presently she is working on a manuscript that examines Indigenous understandings of gender fluidity and the impact these notions have on artistic production. Other areas of interest include Indigenous research methodologies and the incorporation of these ways of knowing into the curation of contemporary and historic Indigenous art. Peter Morin
Peter Morin biography to come Ryan Rice
Ryan Rice, Kanien’kehá:ka, is an independent curator, critic and the Associate Dean, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Interdisciplinary Studies at OCAD University. His career spans 25 years serving in lead curatorial positions at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and the Indigenous Art Centre, curatorial fellowships with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Walter Phillips Gallery, and Curator-In-Residence at Carleton University Art Gallery. Rice was the co-founder of the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and Nation to Nation. In the fall of 2017, he opened the Onsite Gallery award winning inaugural exhibition “raise a flag: work from the Indigenous Art Collection 2000-2015” and is expanding an ongoing curatorial research #LIWYFTTG across multiple projects. Rajni Shah
Rajni Shah is an artist and researcher whose practice is focused on listening and gathering as creative and political acts. She is a Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia, working with Luis C. Sotelo Castro at the Acts of Listening Lab (Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling). For an archive of performance works, see www.rajnishah.com. Karen Tam
Karen Tam is a Montréal-based artist whose research focuses on the constructions and imaginations of ‘ethnic’ spaces through installations in which she recreates Chinese restaurants, karaoke lounges, opium dens, curio shops and other sites of cultural encounters. She has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America, Europe, and China, and has received grants and fellowships from the Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts du Québec, Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada, and Fonds pour la formation de chercheurs et l’aide à la recherche. Tam was a finalist for the 2017 Prix Louis-Comtois, a finalist for the 2016 Prix en art actuel from the Musée national des beaux-arts de Québec, and long-listed for the 2010 and 2016 Sobey Art Awards. Tam holds a MFA in Sculpture (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) and a PhD in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London). Her work is in museum and corporate collections, and in private collections in Canada, United States, and United Kingdom. Swapnaa Tamhane
Swapnaa Tamhane is an artist, curator, and writer. She has exhibited at FOCUS Photography Festival, Mumbai; Art Gallery of Mississauga; and A Space Gallery, Toronto. She curated “In Order to Join – the Political in a Historical Moment,” Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach; Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (former Prince of Wales Museum), Mumbai (2014-2015), and “HERE: Locating Contemporary Canadian Artists,” Aga Khan Museum, Toronto (2017). Tamhane has been a Research Fellow with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (2009), and an International Fellow with Kulturstiftung des Bundes (2013). She has been supported by Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, and Kunststiftung NRW. Tamhane and designer Rashmi Varma curated and wrote SĀR: The Essence of Indian Design, published by Phaidon Press (2016). Laura Vigo
Laura Vigo is curator of Asian Arts at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, where she is currently in charge of the new permanent galleries which will open November 2019. She has just co-curated the show Connections- Our artistic diversity dialogue with our collections, together with Erell Hubert, curator for the arts of the Americas and Genevieve Goyer-Ouimette, curator of Canadian Art after 1945. She is also in charge of the adaptation of the exhibition Egyptian Mummies opening in September 2019 as well as Obsession: William Van Horne and his Japanese ceramics, November 2019. Among her previous projects, Pompeii (2016) and China’s Warrior Emperor and his Terracotta Army in 2011 and the galleries for China and Japan (2012). She has a BA in Chinese language and art history from the University of Venice, an MA in Asian Art and Archaeology and a Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Arts a PhD in Archaeology from The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London (UK). Her professional experience includes museums, private galleries, and auction houses as well a cultural consultancy for non-profit cultural organisations in both Italy and England. She has recently published in specialised magazines such as Arts of Asia, L’Objet d’Art and KunstTexte while contributing to various publications by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. She has been an invited course lecturer at McGill in Chinese Contemporary art and Chinese Archaeology and she is currently invited professor in critical art history at Université de Montréal. |