13 January 2022 7pm
fORUM: Nasrin Himada invites Nadia Kurd, Anique Jordan, and Paul Seesequasis to speak in conversation. Inspired by Anique Jordan’s art practice and curatorial vision, moved by Paul Seesequasis’s Indigenous Photo Archival Project, and excited by Nadia Kurd’s curatorial ethos on how to be with collections and archives, this program is guided by the question of what can images do.
What is possible through process, collaboration, and the compulsion toward making that condition what comes into view. The desire to search for the secrets that might want to be found, but not revealed, connect to ancestral futurities. There is intimacy in the encounter with archival images that enables a life force: one that gives power to a story that is felt, that is embodied, and that is engaged.
This program is the first of three events organized by Himada that extend on the themes of Onyeka Igwe’s exhibition, THE REAL STORY IS WHAT’S IN THAT ROOM.
Download the PDF transcript here.
Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwaciwâskahikan/ Edmonton. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, she has curated exhibitions that have focused on unacknowledged histories, material culture, and emerging artists in Canada. Nadia is currently the Curator of the University of Alberta Art Collection.
Anique Jordan is an artist, writer and curator working in photography, sculpture and performance, often employing hauntology theory to challenge historical or dominant narratives and create impossible images. Jordan lectured as a 2017 Canada Seminar speaker at Harvard University and co-curated the exhibition Every. Now. Then: Reframing Nationhood (2017) at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). She has exhibited in Canada at the AGO; Art Gallery of York University; Art Gallery of Guelph; Doris McCarthy Gallery; the Wedge Collection; Art Gallery of Windsor; Gallery 44; Y+ Contemporary; and has held residencies at the University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago; and Osgoode Hall Law School. She is a recipient of the Hnatyshyn Emerging Artist Award (2018) and the Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist of the Year Award (2017).
Paul Seesequasis is a ᓃᐱᓰᐦᑯᐹᐃᐧᔨᓂᐤ nîpisîhkopâwiyiniw (Willow Cree) writer, cultural worker, curator and commentator currently residing in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He curates the Indigenous Archival Photo Project, an online and physical exhibition of archival Indigenous photographs that explores history, identity and the process of visual reclamation. His photo book Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun was published by Knopf Canada in October 2019. GAZE: a photobiography of Kahentinetha Horn, his next book, will be published by Knopf Canada in Spring 2022. His writings have appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Brick, and Granta magazines, among others.
fORUM is Mercer Union’s ongoing series of talks, lectures, interviews, screenings and performances. Free as always.
Mercer Union’s 2021-22 Online Engagement Supported by TD Bank Group.
