Lecture on Contemporary Art Curation, with Candice Hopkins

On Tuesday, March 18, Candice Hopkins, chief curator and executive director of Forge Project (Taghkanic, New York), will share her experiences and viewpoints on the present-day challenges and possibilities of curatorial practice, offering a unique opportunity to explore the current dynamics of the art world and its institutions.

The event will highlight the launch of the new Graduate Microprogram and Graduate Certificate in Curatorial Studies at Concordia’s Faculty of Fine Arts. Presented in collaboration with the MAC, this lecture is part of a series of initiatives and reflections led by the MAC’s curatorial team in view of its major renovation project and the reopening on Sainte-Catherine Street.

About the Speaker

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Milan, New York. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is executive director and chief curator of Forge Project, Taghkanic, NY. She is curator of the exhibitions,  Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969, at the Hessel Museum; Impossible Music, co-curated with Raven Chacon and Stavia Grimani at the Miller ICA, and the touring exhibitions, Soundings; An Exhibition in Five Parts co-curated with Dylan Robinson, and ᑕᑯᒃᓴᐅᔪᒻᒪᕆᒃ, Double Vision,  featuring textiles, prints and drawings by Jessie Oonark, Janet Kigusiuq, and Victoria Mamnguqsualuk. 

She was the senior curator for the inaugural 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media collective Isuma; documenta 14, Athens and Kassel; and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Her notable essays include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” in the documenta 14 Reader; “Outlawed Social Life,” in South as a State of Mind; and “The Appropriation Debates (or The Gallows of History),” in Saturation: Race, Art, and the Circulation of Value (New Museum/MIT Press, 2020).