Critical Distance Locations Canada

Geneviève Wallen is an award-winning independent curator, writer, researcher, workshop facilitator, and mentor. Wallen’s practice is rooted in Tiohtià:ke/Mooniyang (Montréal) and Tkaronto (Toronto) territories. Her curatorial practice, administrative ethics and pedagogy are informed by intersectional feminism, intergenerational dialogues, and BIPOC platforms offering alternatives to neo-liberal care definitions. Her ongoing curatorial explorations include the practice of gift-giving, carving spaces for unfinished thoughts, and musings on the intersection of longevity and pleasure.

Swapnaa Tamhane is an artist and curator, working between Canada and India. Her visual practice extends to decolonizing distinctions between art, craft, and design, while her curatorial practice is focussed on the wider South-Asian diaspora and contemporary art from India.

Tamhane graduated with a BA in Art History from Carleton University, Ottawa, an MA in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester, and an MFA in Fibres & Material Practices from Concordia University, Montreal. She has been a Research Fellow with the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (2009) and an International Museum Fellow with the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (2013). She has held positions as an Editor at Phaidon Press, London (2002-2006), an Assistant Curator at The Power Plant (2007-2008), Toronto, and a Producer of Contemporary Art Projects at Luminato Festival (2016).

Zoë Chan lives in Vancouver on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and Sel̓íl̓witulh Nations. Since 2018, she has worked as Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she curated Uncommon Language (2020-21), and co-curated Where do we go from here? (2020-21) and Stories that animate us (2021). While working as an independent curator between 2012 and 2019, she delved into a range of subject matter including documentary practices, youth, food, and discourse around representation in art and visual culture. Her curatorial projects have been presented by Trinity Square Video, Vidéographe, Kamloops Art Gallery, Optica, MSVU Art Gallery, Foreman Art Gallery, Articule, and the MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels).

Kate Whiteway is an independent curator based in Toronto. Her area of focus is on research-based artist practices and contemporary exhibition history. Her recent exhibitions include Nicole Coon: Jetee (Beauty Supply, 2024), Andrew James Paterson: Never Enough Night, co-curated with Laura Carusi and Anthony Cooper (the plumb, 2024), Louise Lawler, Louise Noguchi (Beauty Supply, 2023), and John Devlin: Out of a Heart of Quiet (Erin Stump Projects, 2022).

francesca ekwuyasi is a learner, artist, and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread. Her novel was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the DUBLIN Literary Award. As an accomplished writer and artist in her own right, Burnt Sugar at Critical Distance is francesca’s first curatorial project, and an experiment in storytelling across mediums.