Brook Andrew, Mario Caro, Candice Hopkins, and Miguel López | Indigenous Curation

Monday, April 12
Virtual Event – Watch Here!
7:00pm EDT

The term “Indigenous” is often used to refer to ​Native issues at an international level. This panel consists of renowned curators whose practices engage an international circuit of art exhibition while, at the same time, addressing the nationalist and colonialist implications of that same infrastructure. Their practice is particularly relevant when considering the contemporary Indigenous arts they curate. Please join Candice Hopkins, Miguel Lopéz, and Brook Andrew as they discuss curatorial challenges and strategies in curating Indigenous arts globally.

Some of the topics we will discuss include:

• Curating beyond the Biennial
  • the implications of curating beyond the established international Biennial circuit
• Language and the Limits of Internationalism
  • the challenges imposed by language in limiting international representation and exchange
• Curating in Pandemic Times
  • how the pandemic has provided a different lens for assessing the dynamics between various art worlds
• Toward an Indigenous Internationalism
  • ways of reconsidering “internationalism” that take into account Indigenous nationalisms
• ​Curating and Art Markets
  • assessing existing and emerging Indigenous markets that lie beyond Western art markets

A conversation moderated by Mario A. Caro.

Brook Garru Andrew is a leading Australian interdisciplinary artist and scholar who is driven by the collisions of intertwined narratives, often emerging from the mess of the “Colonial Hole”. In 2020, he was Artistic Director of NIRIN, the 22nd Biennale of Sydney. Brook’s matriarchal kinship is from the kalar midday (land of the three rivers) of Wiradjuri, and Ngunnawal on his mother’s father’s line, both Aboriginal nations of Australia, and paternally Celtic. He is Associate Professor Fine Art, Monash University and Enterprise Professor Interdisciplinary Practice, University of Melbourne. Brook Andrew is represented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris and Brussels; Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; and Rosyln Oxley9, Sydney.

Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her writing and curatorial practice explores the intersections of history, contemporary art, and indigeneity. She works as senior curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and was part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 58th Venice Biennale, featuring the work of the media art collective Isuma. She is co-curator of notable exhibitions including Art for New Understanding: Native Voices 1950s to Now; the 2018 SITE Santa Fe biennial, Casa Tomada; documenta 14 in Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany; Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada and Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years in Winnipeg, MB. Her recent essays and presentations include “The Gilded Gaze: Wealth and Economies on the Colonial Frontier,” for the documenta 14 Reader, and “Outlawed Social Life” for South as a State of Mind.

Miguel A. López (Lima, 1983) is a writer, researcher, and curator. His work investigates collaborative dynamics and feminist re-articulations of art and culture in recent decades. Between 2015-2020 he worked at TEOR/éTica, Costa Rica, first as Chief Curator, and since 2018 as Co-director. He has published in periodicals such as Artforum, Afterall, ramona, E-flux journal, Art in America, Art Journal, Manifesta Journal, among others. He is the author of Ficciones disidentes en la tierra de la misoginia (Pesopluma, 2019) and Robar la historia. Contrarrelatos y prácticas artísticas de oposición (Metales Pesados, 2017). He has recently curated “Cecilia Vicuña. Seehearing the Enlightened Failure” at Witte de With, Rotterdam, 2019, MUAC-UNAM, Mexico City, 2020, and CA2M, Madrid, 2021; and “Victoria Cabezas and Priscilla Monge: Give Me What You Ask For” at Americas Society, New York, 2019. In 2016 he was recipient of the Independent Vision Curatorial Award from ICI (Independent Curators International), New York.

Mario A. Caro is a critic, historian, and curator of contemporary Indigenous art. His research topics include the representation of Indigenous cultures within the museum; the visual production of an “aesthetics of nostalgia” within photographic practices; a critique of art historical methodologies as colonial discourses. He has curated various national and international exhibitions and was the curator of exhibitions at Alaska House, New York in Soho. Caro is also a lecturer at ACT, and was recently named Director of the MFA in Studio Arts Program at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA).

Part of ACT’s Spring 2021 Lecture Series, The Incidence of Fingerprints When Earth Meets the Sky.