The Power Plant

The Power Plant presents a panel discussion on the Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity exhibition joined by the exhibition curators Gerald McMaster Noor Alé, as well as curator Tamara Toledo, moderated by The Power Plant’s Head of Curatorial Affairs Adelina Vlas.

Gerald McMaster is a leading voice nationally and internationally, with over 40 years of experience in contemporary art, critical theory, museology and Indigenous aesthetics. He is a Tier 1 Canadian Research Chair at OCAD University and Director of Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge. In 2022, Dr. Gerald McMaster has been named by The Canada Council as the recipient of the 2022 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for his Outstanding Contribution. He is Plains Cree from the Red Pheasant Cree Nation and a citizen of the Siksika Nation. Noor Alé is a curator, writer, and art historian. Her curatorial practice examines the intersections of contemporary art with geopolitics, decolonization, and social justice in the Global South. She has contributed to curatorial research, exhibition management, and public programmes at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY; and Art Dubai. Tamara Toledo is a PhD candidate in Art History and Visual Culture at York University. She is a co-founder of the non-profit arts organization, Latin American Canadian Art Projects. Her research focuses on Latin American diasporic art in Canada shaped by violence, trauma, and displacement, following decolonial practices that defy hegemonic tendencies within contemporary art. Toledo has presented at various conferences in Montreal, New York, Vancouver, Chicago, Mexico City, and Toronto. Her writing has appeared in ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal of the University of California. Toledo is currently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery.

Exhibition Arctic/Amazon: Networks of Global Indigeneity explores the ways in which Indigenous contemporary artists ​and collaborators take on issues of climate change, globalized Indigeneity, and contact zones in and about the Arctic and the Amazon during a time of crisis. The featured artists have their origins or are connected to these places, and their works embody a politics of resistance, resurgence, and ways of knowing and being in relation to the lands that are the source of their knowledge and creativity.