Becoming Our Future: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice explores how Indigenous visual art and culture operate within and from a structural framework that is unique within the cultural milieu. Through a selection of contributions by Indigenous curators, artists, and scholars brings together perspectives that define curatorial practices, and at the same time postulates Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination within the three countries. These compelling essays begin to unearth the connections and historical moments that draw Indigenous curatorial practices together and the differences that set them apart.
Dr. Julie Nagam (Metis/German/Syrian) is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media and the former Research Chair of Indigenous Arts of NorthAmerica which was a joint position with the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Dr. Nagam is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020/21 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. Dr. Nagam?s SSHRC research includes digital makerspaces + incubators, mentorship, digital media + design, international collaborations and place-based knowledge. She is a collective member of GLAM, which works on curatorial activism, Indigenous methodologies, public art, digital technologies, and engagement with place. As a scholar and artist she is interested in revealing the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge and living histories. Dr. Nagam?s scholarship, curatorial and artistic practice has been featured nationally and internationally. She is building an Indigenous Research Centre of Collaborative and Digital Media Labs in Winnipeg, Canada.
Carly Lane is the Curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. She is a Murri woman from Queensland and has worked as a curator for nearly twenty-five years, including at the National Gallery of Australia, National Museum of Australia and the Berndt Museum of Anthropology. Carly uses her role as curator to care for culture, to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices are part of the national conversation, and to enable self-determination, equality, and social change. Three shows that are dear to her curatorial-heart are the Second National Indigenous Art Triennial (National Gallery of Australia, 2012), Everyone has a history: Plain Speak (Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2017) and Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley (Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2019), which she co-curated with Emilia Galatis and several more curators from the Kimberley region. She finds inspiration in political art and any art (really) where the artist speaks their political, social, and cultural truth.
Megan Tamati-Quennell is a leading curator and writer of modern & contemporary M?ori & Indigenous art, a field she has worked in for three decades. Her research interests include M?ori modernism, Mana W?hine M?ori?the M?ori women artists of the 1980s and 1990s, The M?ori Internationals?the urban avant-garde M?ori artists of the 1990s, International Indigenous art and Indigenous art curatorial praxis. She currently holds two curatorial positions; Curator modern & contemporary Maori &Indigenous art at Te Papa in Wellington and Associate Indigenous Curator, Contemporary Art | Kairauh? Taketake Toi On?ianei at the Govett Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth. Her current projects include an essay for Nirin, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney, writing and editing a limited edition publication related to detour, a major commission by leading conceptual artist Michael Parekowhai. An essay exploring primitivism and Len Lye?s use of Indigenous art for Len Lye Motion Composer at the Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland and developing a publication focused on building the Modern & contemporary M?ori and Indigenous art collection at Te Papa. Her current exhibitions include Mining Darkness, focused on trace, unearthed and often traumatic histories, an exhibition about the Women of Maori modernism and an exhibition focused the work of Matt Pine, a minimalist M?ori sculptor and his work with pre contact M?ori land modification and architecture. Megan is of Te ?ti Awa, Ng?ti Mutunga and Ng?i Tahu, K?ti M?moe and Waitaha M?ori descent.
