Exchange as a Symmetrical Gesture - Visiting Curator Program Closing Celebration

Celebrate the culmination of the SOAG Visiting Curator Program with an evening of readings, dialogue, and community 

6:30 PM | Doors open
7:00 PM | Opening reading by artist Erika DeFreitas 
7:30 PM | Curatorial panel with Grace Deveney, Shalaka Jadhav, and Lillian O’Brien Davis | Moderated by Nic Wilson 

Reception to follow & launch of the program’s three publications 

Free admission 

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Erika DeFreitas 

Erika DeFreitas’s interdisciplinary practice includes performance, photography, video, installation, textiles, drawing and writing. Placing emphasis on gesture, process, the body, documentation and paranormal phenomena, DeFreitas mines concepts of loss, post-memory, legacy and objecthood. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. DeFreitas holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.  

Grace Deveney 
Grace Deveney is a curator and art historian who holds a PhD in Art History from Northwestern University. She is the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. Previously, she was Associate Curator of the fifth iteration of Prospect, a New Orleans-based contemporary art triennial, titled Prospect.5: Yesterday we said tomorrow (2021) and Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Exhibitions at the MCA include a mid-career survey of the work of painter Christina Quarles (2021), Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power (2019) and Groundings (2018; with Tara Aisha Willis), and presentations of the work of Paul Pfeiffer and Amanda Williams (both 2017).  
 
Shalaka Jadhav 

Shalaka Jadhav is a writer, researcher, and curator who spent their childhood between cities in India and in Dubai, before moving to a neighbourhood spitting distance from Ontario’s largest mall. Trained as an urban planner, Shalaka has bridged critical narratives of belonging and resilience through climate impact projects at local, national, and international levels, and has been named a Future of Good Young Impact Leader. Shalaka’s research and curatorial interests exploring spatial positionality and critical geographies of grief, public memory, and queer ecologies can be evidenced in exhibitions they have curated in Halifax, Winnipeg, Guelph, and Toronto. They have held roles at OCAD University and The Blackwood, and co-direct Textile, a hyper-local arts collective in Waterloo Region that supports writers and artists through mentorship, publishing, and curation. Shalaka splits their time on Haldimand Tract and Treaty 1 territory and always orders dessert. 
 
Lillian O’Brien Davis 
Lillian O'Brien Davis (she/her) is the Associate Curator at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position of Curator of Collections and Contemporary Art Engagement at the Goldfarb Gallery of York University. She has curated independent projects at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto, Susan Hobbs Gallery (Toronto), and School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba. Her writing has appeared in BlackFlash Magazine, Peripheral Review, Canadian Art online, C Magazine, and RACAR Art History Journal. 

Nic Wilson 

Nic Wilson (they/he) is an artist born in the Wolastoqiyik territory known as Fredericton, NB in 1988. He graduated with a BFA from Mount Allison University, Mi’kmaq territory, in 2012, and an MFA from the University of Regina, Treaty Four Territory, in 2019 where he was a SSHRC graduate fellow. They have shown work across Canada and participated in projects with Remai Modern, Plug In ICA, Art Souterrain, and the Mackenzie Art Gallery. They have shown work internationally with Venice International Performance Art Week, Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América in Mexico City, NADA in Bogotá, and OpenArt In Örebro, Sweden. Working across media, Wilson creates videos, texts, performances and artist books. Their work often engages time, queer lineage, decay, and the distance between art practice and literature. In 2021 they were long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. They were the 2022 writer-in-residence for G44 Centre for Contemporary Photography.

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About the program 

Launched in Summer 2021, the Visiting Curator Program served as a catalyst for three international-caliber exhibitions and played a vital role in defining contemporary art and its attendant discourses in the Prairies. It also gave students, faculty, and other community members meaningful opportunities to engage with curators charting new trajectories in the field. Through its mentorship component, it fostered strong new voices in this field. 

The program is generously supported by Dr. Michael F.B. Nesbitt, whose contributions to the arts and community-building are deeply felt throughout Winnipeg, and especially at the University of Manitoba.