My curiosities are not your curios

Awarded the 5th annual Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, Yasmin Nurming-Por’s exhibition My curiosities are not your curios examines the idea of collections and their institutional and colonial histories through the work of contemporary artists for whom the act of collecting is both a creative and critical practice. Within the wider context of Canada’s sesquicentennial and re-examinations of accepted narratives of nationhood, the exhibition raises important questions about how such knowledge is established as well as how artistic practice can produce vital new insight and imagination.

Bringing together cross-generational artists – Sara Cwynar (New York, NY); Hannah Doerksen (Calgary, AB); Deborah Edmeades (New York, NY/ Vancouver, BC); Faye HeavyShield (Blood Reserve, Alberta); and Lucy Tasseor Tutsweetok (d. 2012, Arviat, Nunavut) – each offers a contemporary perspective on the traditional “cabinet of curiosities,” complicating historical approaches to the use and display of objects. With collections that activate history, culture, and the land itself in their explorations of the politics of display, the artists highlight how these systems – and “curiosities” themselves – can also be powerful sources of alternative narratives. At once deeply personal and inherently political, the exhibition draws attention to collecting as a method of making, proposing strategies to destabilize and create new forms of knowledge.