Current Projects

Centre for Sustainable Curating

The Centre for Sustainable Curating supports research, exhibitions, visual/digital production, and pedagogy focused on environmental and social justice. Located in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University, the CSC encourages research into waste, pollution, and climate crisis, and the development of exhibitions and artworks with low carbon footprints. The CSC website and Instagram contain much more information.

 Museum for Future Fossils

A Museum for Future Fossils is a collaborative project with Dr. Eugenia Kisin, NYU. It asks what it means to engage with human impact on the environment from a curatorial perspective. Thus far it has included two undergraduate classes, a graduate summer school, a workshop, two student exhibitions, a major exhibition featuring international contemporary artists, and a peer-reviewed article. The project is ongoing and will have further outcomes.

Synthetic Collective

Synthetic Collective is an interdisciplinary international collaboration among visual artists, cultural workers and scientists (Western University, Concordia University, New School, University of Wisconsin). We work together to sample, map, understand, and visualize the complexities of plastics and micro-plastics pollution in the Great Lakes Region. The project has resulted in numerous publications and a major exhibition (Toronto 2021, Paris 2022).

Textiles

Since the early 2000s, I have written extensively about textiles, with a focus on contemporary art, trade, and labour. Since 2017, I have turned my focus to synthetic textiles, which overlaps with my research on plastics, plastics pollution, and environmental crisis. Publications in the works include research into fatbergs, the use of microfiber cloths in museum spaces, mylar, and space textiles.

Activism in the Museum

Stemming from research that I undertook as a part of my book Tear Gas Epiphanies: Protest, Culture, Museums (2019), I continue to work on activism that takes place at the thresholds and inside of museums. Articles are in preparation on actions that took place mainly in the late 1960s and 1970s at Canadian institutions, including an anti-racist protest and environmental and anti-corporate actions outside of galleries and museums in Toronto.

Countering the Museum

This project examines “museums” and collections that are open to the public, but that fall well outside of the ICOM definition of a traditional museum. I am specifically interested in the critical potential of such institutions. How can those who feel blocked or hindered by establishment museums use the form of the museum against itself to create oppositional or critical spaces? The project has resulted in publications and public presentations. A book manuscript is in preparation.

image: Plastiglomerate, collected by Patricia Corcoran, photo by Kelly Wood, 2016

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