Critical Distance Identities Feminist

Emma Steen is a freelance curator and writer, as well as the Director of Membership for the Indigenous Curatorial Collective. Her area of interest lies in art that explores intimacies, bodies, and gathering with anti-colonial intention. Her background also includes extensive work in community arts organizing, arts administration, and supporting methods of institutional accountability. 

As a writer Emma has contributed to many arts & culture publications and art galleries. In 2020 she was awarded OCAD’s Outstanding Master’s Thesis/MRP Writing Awards for her paper, “Why the 90s Were so Sexy: locating sexuality, pleasure and desire in work produced by Indigenous women identified artists during the 1990s and early 2000s in Canada.”

Liz Ikiriko is a Tkaronto/Toronto-based, Nigerian Canadian artist and curator. Her role as an educator, maker, and mother informs her practice, which focuses on African and diasporic narratives. Ikiriko holds an MFA in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University (2019). Her writing is published in Aperture, Public Journal, MICE Magazine, C Magazine, Blackflash, and Akimbo. She currently is the co-curator of Bamako Encounters 2021 Photography Biennale in Mali, West Africa and is the Curator of Collections and Contemporary Engagement at the Art Gallery of York University.