Noor Bhangu | Curator-in-Residence
July 22 – September 28, 2019
Lecture on the Patio | Saturday, July 27 at 1 pm
Noor Bhangu’s curatorial residency will be a continued effort in her pursuit of the decolonization of Canadian art collections and institutions. In her academic work, Bhangu has analyzed the histories surrounding collection practices in Canadian institutions and the traces of orientalist and colonial methods of curating that mark patterns of exclusion within these collections. Through careful research and curation, Bhangu has exposed gaps within Canadian art collections that dissolve the semblance of an objective history of art making and collecting as displayed by Canadian art institutions. Bhangu’s work has highlighted the failures of Canadian art collections to display any tangible records of inclusion and representation of marginalized people.
Utilizing the theory of “curatorial dreaming” as a method to offer tangible solutions to the problems of colonized institutional spaces, Noor Bhangu has offered QTBIPOC artists a way into institutions and collections that have long absented their bodies and work. During her Latitude 53 curatorial residency, she is interested in speaking to Edmonton-based QTBIPOC artists. Through these conversations, she will be researching along the lines of collection practices that result from artistic engagement with colonial, national, familial, and vernacular material. In other words, how can space- and race-based interrogations with historical material present new understandings of collections and access.
Noor Bhangu is an emerging curator and scholar of South Asian descent based between Winnipeg, Treaty 1 and Toronto/Tkaronto, whose practice employs cross-cultural encounters to interrogate issues of diaspora and indigeneity in post- and settler-colonial contexts. She completed her BA in the History of Art and her MA in Cultural Studies: Curatorial Practices from the University of Winnipeg. Her written work has appeared in academic and public journals, including Black Flash, gal-dem, Moveable Type: The University College London English Journal, Public Parking, Uncommon Sense, and C Magazine. Her curatorial practice includes projects: Overlapping Violent Histories: A Curatorial Investigation into Difficult Knowledge (2018), womenofcolour@soagallery (2018), and Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet: Performative Body Archives in Contemporary Art (2018).In 2018, she began her PhD in Communication and Culture at Ryerson and York University in Toronto.
Installation view of Not the Camera, But the Filing Cabinet: Performative Body Archives in Contemporary Art, 2018, Gallery 1C03 in Winnipeg, Canada.
Installation view, Lines of Difference: The Art of Translating Islam, 2019, La Maison des artistes visuels francophones, Winnipeg. Canada.