Heather Igloliorte

Aboriginal Gathering Place Speaker Series

We are very pleased to present  Heather Igloliorte!
Aboriginal Gathering Place Speaker Series
Join us at the AGP on Friday February 24, 11:30-1pm.

Heather Igloliorte (Inuit, Nunatsiavut Territory of Labrador) is an Assistant Professor of Aboriginal art history at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec.

Heather’s teaching and research interests center on Inuit and other Native North American visual and material culture, circumpolar art studies, performance and media art, the global exhibition of Indigenous arts and culture, and issues of colonization, sovereignty, resistance and resilience. Some of her recent publications related to this work include chapters and catalogue essays in Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism (2012); Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation 3 (2012); Curating Difficult Knowledge (2011); Native American Art At Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art (2011); Inuit Modern (2010); Response, Responsibility, and Renewal: Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Journey (2009); and Negotiations in a Vacant Lot: Studying the Visual in Canada (forthcoming, 2014). She is also an active independent curator. One of her current projects is the reinstallation of the permanent collection of Inuit art at the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec. Other recent curatorial projects include aboDIGITAL: The Art of Jordan Bennett (2012), Decolonize Me (Ottawa Art Gallery, 2011 – 2015), and “we were so far away”: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools (Legacy of Hope Foundation, 2009 – ongoing).  Igloliorte served as an Executive Member of the Board of Directors for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective (2005 – 2011) and as the President of Gallery 101 (Ottawa, 2009 – 2011); she currently serves on the Board of Directors for North America’s largest Indigenous art historical association, the Native North American Art Studies Association, and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. She also serves on the Indigenous Advisory Council of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (opening 2014) and regularly contributes to other Aboriginal arts and cultural organizations.

Igloliorte completed her phd in Cultural Mediations at Carleton University’s Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC); her dissertation contributes the first art history of the Nunatsiavummiut, focusing on over 400 years of post-contact production, Nunatsiavummi Sananguagusigisimajangit / Nunatsiavut Art History:  Continuity, Resilience, and Transformation in Inuit Art (2013). She is currently working with the Nunatsiavut Territory to bring the arts and culture of the Nunatsiavummiut (Labrador Inuit) to light through several ongoing and multiplatform collaborative community-based projects. One of these is projects, the creation of a large scale touring exhibition of Nunatsiavut contemporary art, is being coordinated through the SSHRC Partnership Grant Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage: a multi-media / multi-platform re-engagement of voice in visual art and performance (2013 – 2017).

Please note: Heather will be also give a presentation in the Lecture Hall, room 301 SB, on February 23 at 7pm.