CONTRIBUTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

LISA BALDISSERA has worked in curatorial roles in public art galleries in Canada and as an independent curator, consultant, and writer for over eighteen years. She was curator of contemporary art at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and chief curator at the Mendel Art Gallery, and is currently senior curator at Contemporary Calgary. Baldissera has produced more than fifty exhibitions of local, Canadian, and international artists. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in art from the University of Saskatchewan, and is currently a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has served on contemporary art juries across Canada, including the RBC Canadian Painting Competition, the Sobey Art Award, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Awards in Visual Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council. She was also a professional affiliate at the University of Saskatchewan and contributing editor for the Art Canada Institute online art book series, where she produced a publication on Emily Carr.

Baldissera is co-curator, along with independent curator Joanne Bristol, of extratextual, an international exhibition on art and writing at Contemporary Calgary, as well as co-producer of the symposium Never the Same: what (else) can art writing do?

DIANA FREUNDL is the associate curator, Asian Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. In 2014, she curated Unscrolled: Reframing Tradition in Chinese Contemporary Art, in addition to co-curating the major retrospectives Lee Bul and Bharti Kher Matter in 2015 and 2016, respectively. Recent exhibitions include Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver and Howie Tsui: Retainers of Anarchy. She is the curator of the gallery’s public art space,

Offsite, which has included site-specific installations by MadeIn Company, Reena Saini Kallat, Asim Waqif, and Tsang Kin Wah, among others. Prior to the Vancouver Art Gallery, Freundl was living in Asia, where she was a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) in Shanghai and the artistic director of Art+Shanghai. She has an academic background in comparative religion, philosophy, and graduate studies in journalism.

REGAN SHRUMM is an independent curator who is currently an uninvited guest on the unceded territory of the Lekwungen peoples. She received an MA in art history and visual studies from the University of Victoria. She is currently an assistant curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Shrumm has previously held curatorial positions with Open Space and Legacy Art Gallery in Victoria, British Columbia; the Pacific Northwest Quilt & Fiber Art Museum and Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, Washington; and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. Her essays have been published in exhibition catalogues such as The Art of A. Banana Unpeeled (Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space, 2017), Indigenous Influences (Museum of Northwest Art, 2017), and most recently, Forgotten Females of Salt Spring Island (Salt Spring Arts Council, 2018).

Curator, arts administrator, and occasional writer HELEN MARZOLF was the executive director of the artist-run centre Open Space from 2005 to 2017. Previously, she was director/curator of the Dunlop Art Gallery (1991–2001) in Regina. Marzolf has contributed to publications by the Mendel Art Gallery and the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon), the Mackenzie Art Gallery (Regina), Open Space, and Carleton University (Ottawa).

TARA NICHOLSON incorporates photography and video to investigate remote and often disputed territories. The notion of modern-day pilgrimage has been repeated throughout her large-scale projects for the past five years to invite reflection on the desire to retreat and escape. Nicholson has exhibited and attended residencies internationally; notably, in 2013, Nicholson was invited to be the artist in residence at the Künstlerhaus Dortmund in Germany. Recent exhibitions include Modern Fuel Artist-Run Centre in Kingston, Ontario; as well as Two Rivers Gallery in Prince George, the Burnaby Art Gallery, and the Vernon Art Gallery in British Columbia. Tara Nicholson has taught at the University of Victoria since 2010.

NAOMI KENNEDY interviews creative minds to grasp the essence of a concept, to then be relayed for digestion by the passive viewer. Kennedy bridged into the medium of film in 2017 with the assistance of MediaNet. She has been in active creation in the Victoria community for the last seven years, completing a post diploma in fine arts from Victoria College of Art in 2014.

SOPHIE POUYANNE is a graphic designer and copy editor with a BFA in visual arts from the University of Victoria and an MPub from Simon Fraser University. She has designed and edited artist books for Open Space Arts Society and Legacy Art Gallery in Victoria.