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Julie Nagam

Julie Nagam Title: Associate Professor, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media, Director of Aabijijiwan New Media Lab
Phone: 204.988.7665
Office: 3A22
Building: Ashdown
Email: j.nagam@uwinnipeg.ca

Biography:

Dr. Julie Nagam is a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts, Collaboration and Digital Media and the former Research Chair of Indigenous Arts of North America which was a joint position with the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Dr. Nagam is an Associate Professor in the department of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She is the inaugural Artistic Director for 2020/21 for Nuit Blanche Toronto, the largest public exhibition in North America. Dr. Nagam is the Director of the Aabijijiwan New Media Lab and the Co-Director of the Kishaadigeh Collaborative Research Centre aabijijiwanmedialab.ca

Dr. Nagam is a collective member of GLAM (https://glamcollective.ca), which works on curatorial activism, Indigenous methodologies, public art, digital technologies, and engagement with place. As a scholar and artist she is interested in revealing the ontology of land, which contains memory, knowledge and living histories. Dr. Nagam’s scholarship, curatorial and artistic practice has been featured nationally and internationally.

Dr. Nagam's SSHRC research includes digital makerspaces + incubators, mentorship, digital media + design, international collaborations and place-based knowledge. She is the Principal Investigator of the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant “The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design.” She is a co-investigator on a number of SSHRC Partnership Grants. As part of the partnership Initiative for Indigenous Futures, Dr. Nagam organized and hosted the 2017 symposium The Future is Indigenous (https://indigenousfutures.net/symposia/3rd-annual-symposium/). This symposium brought together over 45 speakers from Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Finland, and the United States to present their visions of the future of Indigenous people. At the same time hosted the International Indigenous curators exchange. In 2016, she co-edited Indigenous Art, New Media and the Digital special issue of PUBLIC Art, Culture + Ideas. She recently led and co-edited Becoming our Futures: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice with ARP press, based on the international curatorial exchange with Australia and New Zealand.

Dr. Nagam has an active curatorial and artistic practice. She co-curated the exhibitions Gathering Across Moana at Trinity Video and TMAC galleries in partnership with imagineNATIVE and Insurgence/Resurgence—the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s largest ever exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art. Most recently, Dr. Nagam curated in Pursuit of Venus [infected] at the Art Gallery of Ontario (2019-20). She is curating public artwork at the Forks with the Winnipeg Foundation. Her artistic work has been exhibited internationally, including in Brazil, France, New Zealand, and England. Which includes solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally,

Dr. Nagam has been an Adjunct Faculty Member at York University (2013-2019), OCAD University (2015-2019), and the University of Manitoba (2015-2020). She has been a scholar in residence at Concordia University and Massey University (2018-19) and, in 2022, will be a fellow at the University of Sydney. She holds a PhD in Social and Political Thought from York University.

Teaching Areas:

ART HISTORY

Courses:

Courses Taught:

  • HIST 3814 Indigenous Art
  • HIST 3826 Art History in Focus – Urban Interventions: Art, Design, and the City
  • HIST 4815 Cultures of the Past: Art History & Memory – Diverse Spaces: The Collection of Multicultural and Indigenous Art and Artifacts in Canadian Museums and Contemporary Galleries
  • HIST 4831 Practicum in Curatorial Studies

Student Institutes and Courses: As part of SSHRC funding we took students to Venice Biennale, Sydney Biannual, The National Gallery, The Indigenous Art Centre, BACA Indigenous Biannual

Research Interests:

Research Interests: Cultural and concealed geographies, Indigenous contemporary art, Indigenous theory and methodologies, digital and new media art, public art, critical, curatorial and cultural theory.

SSHRC Grants:

Principle Investigator:

  • The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design (2020-2022) https://www.thespacebetweenus.ca/
  • The Transactive Memory Keepers: Indigenous Public Engagement in Digital and New Media Labs and Exhibitions (2016-2020) (www.glamcollective.ca)
  • The Kanata Indigenous Performance, New and Digital Media Art Project (2013-2015).( http://www.transactivememorykeepers.org)

Co-Investigator:

  • Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq Project (2018-24)
    PI Dr. Heather Igloliorte - https://www.inuitfutures.ca)
  • Co-Investigator: Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage
    PI - Dr. Janine Marchessault - https://counterarchive.ca) (2018-2024)
  • Co-Investigator: Initiative for Indigenous Futures (2015-2022)
    PI - Jason Lewis - http://indigenousfutures.net)
  • Performance, Placemaking, and Cultural Policy Workshop and Digital Hub (2014)
    PI - Dr. Laura Levin.

Collaborator:

Publications:

Edited Journals, Books, Catalogues

Nagam, Julie, Carly Lane, and Megan Tamati-Quenell, eds. Becoming Our Future: Global Indigenous Curatorial Practice. ARP Books, 2020

Nagam, Julie and Jaimie Issac, eds. INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE. Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2017

Nagam, Julie, Carla Taunton, and Heather Igloliorte, eds. PUBLIC Art, Culture, Ideas 54: Indigenous Art. Winter 2016

 

Referred Publications (Selected)

Nagam, Julie. “The Giving Tree: Methodologies of Generosity.” In Indigenous Methodologies, edited by Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton. London: Routledge Press, 2021.

Nagam, Julie and Carla Taunton. “Performing Memory: Embodied Interventions by Indigenous Women Artists.” In Insiders/Outsiders: The Cultural Politics and Ethics of Indigenous Representation and Participation in Canada’s Media Arts, edited by Dana Claxton and Ezra Winton. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019

Nagam, Julie. “Disruption Toronto’s Urban Space Through the Creative (In)terventions of Robert Houle.” In Εικόνα Visual Studies Vol 1. Mexico City: SIMO Cultura, 2019.

Nagan, Julie. “Traveling Soles: Tracing the Footprints of Our Stolen Sisters.” In Canadian Voices on Performance Studies/Theory, edited by Laura Levin and Marlis Schweitzer. Montreal: McGill-Queens Press, 2017.

Nagam, Julie. “Deciphering the Digital and Binary Codes of Sovereignty/Self-Determination and Recognition/Emancipation.” PUBLIC Art, Culture, Ideas 54: Indigenous Art. Edited by Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Carla Taunton (Winter 2016).

Nagam, Julie, Heather Igloliorte, and Carla Taunton. “Transmissions: The Future Possibilities of Indigenous Digital and New Media Art.” PUBLIC Art, Culture, Ideas 54: Indigenous Art. Edited by Heather Igloliorte, Julie Nagam, and Carla Taunton (Winter 2016).

Nagam, Julie. “Mapping Stories of Place: An Alternative Cartography Through the Visual Narrative of Jeff Thomas.” In Diverse Spaces: Examining Identity, Heritage, and Community Within Canadian Public Culture, edited by Susan Ashley. New York: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013.

 

Curatorial Projects (Selected)

Artistic Director. The Space Between Us. Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2020-2021) International.

Curator. in Pursuit of Venus [infected]. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2019-2020) International.

Co-Curator. Gathering Across Moana. Trinity Video + TMAC Galleries, Toronto (2019) International.

Co-Curator. Memory Keepers II. Art in the Open, Charlottetown (2019) National.

Co-Curator. Memory Keepers I: Gardiens des Memories. Nuit Blanche, Montreal (2019) National.

Co-Curator. Acts of Compassion. Public art works for the Winnipeg Foundation and Forks Corporation, Stage 1 and 2, Winnipeg (2018-2021) National.

Co-Curator. INSURGENCE/RESURGENCE. Winnipeg Art Gallery (2017-2018) National.


Solo and Group Exhibitions (Selected)

my river goes with me. (With Johnson Witehira) Urban Shaman, Winnipeg (2021) and The Dowse Museum, Wellington, New Zealand (2021) International.

loss and destruction in “If the solution is not beautiful, I know it’s wrong”. (Group) London Museum (2020) National.

locating the little heartbeats (Solo) Te Whare Hera, Wellington, New Zealand (2019) International.

locating the little heartbeats. (Solo) Gallery 1C03, Winnipeg (2019) National.

our future is in the land. (Solo) A-Space, Toronto (2018) National.

our future is in the land: if we listen to it in “Transformers.” (Group) Smithsonian Museum, New York (2017) International.

Manitowapow: Speaking to the Moon. Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2017) National.

Electrical Currents. Public Art for Winnipeg Art Council (2017) National.

Reverbs: Sound Seeds. (Collaboration with artist Tsēma Tamara Skubovius) Toronto (2017) and Santiago, Chile (2015) National and International.