Dr. Gerald McMaster

Dr. McMaster has over 30 years international work and expertise in contemporary art, critical theory, museology and Indigenous aesthetics. His experience as an artist and curator in art and ethnology museums researching and collecting art, as well as producing exhibitions has given him a thorough understanding of transnational Indigenous visual culture and curatorial practice. His early interests concerned the ways in which culturally sensitive objects were displayed in ethnology museums, as well as the lack of representation of Indigenous artists in art museums.

As a practicing artist, he offered a way of staging hitherto decontextualized objects different from the traditional formats favoured by exhibition designers trained in Western traditions; instead, his was an approach that rested on Indigenous epistemologies. These early stages in developing an –Indigenous visuality led him to study concepts in visual, experiential and spatial composition. His exhibition Savage Graces (1992) challenged long held views, and played a major role in breaking down conventional barriers around where art should be practiced, while also demonstrating that art is not tied to ethnicity.

As a curator, he focused on advancing the intellectual landscape for Indigenous curatorship through the foundational concept of voice. He curated, for example, an exhibition called Indigena (1992) that brought together unfiltered Indigenous voices for the first time. Until then, non-Indigenous scholars had dominated discussions of Indigenous art, history and culture. McMaster made the point that Indigenous artists and writers were more than capable of representing themselves in articulate, eloquent ways.

Over the past 20 years, he has continued to refine the idea of voice, leading him to ask: How can Indigenous voices continue providing new perspectives on well-researched subjects such as art, history and anthropology? Throughout his career, his championing of the mainstream value of Indigenous art, among other things, has led to his being chosen to represent Canada at a number of prestigious international events. These include his serving as Canadian Commissioner for the 1995 Venice Biennale, and as artistic director of the 2012 Biennale of Sydney, and curator for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. 

Dr. Michael Rattray

Dr. Rattray is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Wapatah under the supervision of Dr. McMaster. Before joining the centre, he was the executive editor and associate publisher at the Art Canada Institute, and the senior editor at Adbusters Magazine. He completed his PhD at Concordia University in Montreal, under the direction of Dr. Johanne Sloan. His PhD dissertation, “Functional Anarchism(s) and the Theory of Global Contemporary Art,” evaluates globalized art within an anarchist philosophical trajectory. An exhibiting artist, curator, and critic, his work on contemporary art and art history has been published or exhibited in a variety of forms. 

Natalja Chestopalova

Natalja Chestopalova is part of the Ph.D. in Communication and Culture Program at York and Ryerson Universities in Toronto. Her research is informed by the study of digital media, archival aesthetics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis, and focuses on the transformative sensory experience and multimodality in film, graphic novel medium, and theatrical site-specific performances. With the support from the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC), she has presented at multiple Canadian and International events, including roundtables & panels on new media archives, visual storytelling, and preservation of ephemeral cultural narratives. Her recent works include papers and multimodal installations on archives-of-trauma in non-fiction graphic narratives and theoretical developments in the Lacanian concept of the voice and voicelessness. Her publications appear in the White Wall Review, Canadian Journal of Communication, Dialogue, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism, Sound Effects: The Object Voice in Fiction, and an essay volume on the Freudian theory of afterwardness and archives-of-feeling in comics of Alison Bechdel.
Currently Natalja is working as a researcher at the Ontario College of Art and Design University with Gerald McMaster. As part of the Indigenous Visual Culture Research Centre she is contributing to projects that actively support Indigenous talent, and promote meaningful research exchange, and contribute to the creation of living digital archives that can mobilize and centralize Indigenous knowledge.

Nina Vincent

Nina Vincent is a Brazilian anthropologist, researcher, professor, independent curator and currently works at the National Institute of Historical and Artistic Heritage (IPHAN), where she works close to communities to preserve intangible heritage and Brazilian popular/traditional culture.

Bachelor in Social Sciences at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) with exchange period at Université Paris X – Nanterre, France. She has a master degree and a PhD in Anthropology at the same institution. In 2021 she held the thesis called “ART, INDIGENOUS LAND. Paths and relations of Indigenous Contemporary Arts between worlds” (2021) addressing the emergence of a contemporary indigenous art scene in Brazil over the past decade.

Author of “Paris, Maori. The museum and its others” (2015) her Master’s dissertation published by Garamond through the Social Sciences National Association (ANPOCS) best dissertation prize granted to her in 2013. The book analyzes the visuality and curatorial proposition of some exhibitions held at the Musée Du Quai Branly, specially one curated by the Maori, indigenous people from New Zealand, exploring relations between colonialism, primitivism, arts, cultural representation, aesthetic regimes, material culture and the agency of objects.

In 2016 was the recipient of the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program scholarship that brought her to work at Wapatah/OCAD U on the Arctic Amazon project coordinated by Gerald McMaster.
She was research assistant to the collective exhibition On the path of glass beads organized by Els Lagrou at Museu do Índio, Brazil.
Has taught Anthropology of Art, Indigenous and Afrobrazillian Arts at the Art School (EBA)of UFRJ (2014) and offered workshops and classes on Anthropology, Art, and Curatorial issues at other academic and artistic institution.

She was assistant editor to the publication “Brazilian Culture Today”, from Fundação Casa de Rui Barbosa, Brazil, a compilation of lectures by Brazilian contemporary artists from all fields.

Brittany Bergin

Brittany Pitseolak Bergin is a research assistant at Wapatah Centre, OCAD University. Raised in Southern Ontario, her family is from Kinngait, Cape Dorset. Inspired by the artists in her family and community, including her great-grandmother and namesake Pitseolak Ashoona, Brittany’s focus at Wapatah is centred in community engagement as she continues to support major projects and outreach initiatives. Her work has been integral to the success of projects such as the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art, Arctic/Amazon Symposium, Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity exhibition and publication, and Indigenizing the (Art) Museum Virtual Series. Her most recent conferences include the Frontend Conference (Munich) and Inuit Studies Conference (Montreal). 

Mariah Meawasige

Mariah (Makoose) is an Anishinaabe/settler and creative from the northern shores of Lake Huron. Her practice specializes in graphic design but questions the bounds of communication through illustration, sculpture, video, and performance. She created the logo for the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge and is currently working on the centre’s visual identity. Through her love of stories and storytelling, Mariah’s body of work aims to explore temporalities and place, map memories, and build relationships.

Na’ama Freeman

Na’ama Freeman is a master’s student in the Criticism and Curatorial Practice Program at OCAD University and holds a BA in History from McGill University (2018). She is interested in the intersection of art, design, and audience agency within art institutions. At Wapatah, Na’ama is a Research Assistant supporting Dr. Gerald McMaster in the Arctic Amazon Project. 

Jananda Lima

Jananda Lima has a master’s degree in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University. Her research in social design involves fieldwork in radically marginalized territories. As a futures designer, she focuses on reclaiming design for decolonial world-making. Jananda is the co-founder of the Medio Xingu Observatory, which proposes a partnership between Indigenous and academic knowledge, using cartography to generate counter-narratives. She is also a member of E2GLATS, which aims to create exchange flows otherwise, supporting shared value resources and knowledge. Currently, Jananda is a sessional instructor at the School of Graduate Studies at OCAD University.

Pedro Portella

Pedro Portella has a Bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts (2001) and a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology (2014) at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. He is currently a PhD student in social anthropology at the National Museum of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He was also selected as the recipient of the Emerging Leaders in the Americas Program in 2021. Portella is director, photographer, editor, film curator and expert in ethnographic cinema with emphasis in Indigenous Audiovisual and Art. He worked as coordinator of audiovisual workshops for 30 indigenous groups, in Brazil and French Guiana along his career. The emphasis of his research is based on the understanding of indigenous rituals and performances as body drawings, in which gestures and choreography are natively understood as artistic and creative processes, that depend on a technical domain transmitted by supermundane beings. In his work, he shares audiovisual tools focusing on documentation as a collective method of affirming social identities. The documentation of indigenous art, by its own artists, in this context, is a liberating practice that can help first nations combat problems such as suicide and alcoholism.