Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators Award Presentation and Curator’s Talk

Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators Award Presentation and Curator’s Talk
—September 15, 5:30 pm

The Art Gallery of Guelph (AGG) is pleased to welcome Yasmin Nurming-Por, winner of the 2017 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, for the award presentation at the Art Gallery of Guelph on Friday, September 15, at 5:30 pm. Nurming-Por will also offer a talk addressing her exhibition My curiosities are not your curios, on view from September 14 – December 17, 2017. All welcome; free admission.

Created in 2013, the prestigious Middlebrook Prize is awarded annually to a Canadian curatorunder 30. By supporting and mobilizing Canadian creative talent, the prize aims to inspire positive social change through creativity in an era of ongoing and unprecedented economic, environmental, social, and cultural challenges.

My curiosities are not your curios explores 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. Featured artists include 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).

The jury for the 2017 Middlebrook Prize included Nancy Campbell, independent curator and
writer on contemporary and Inuit art, Toronto; Natasha Chaykowski, 2014 Middlebrook Prize
Recipient (with Alison Cooley) and Director, Untitled Art Society, Calgary; and Rhéanne
Chartrand, Aboriginal Curatorial Resident, McMaster Museum of Art, Hamilton.

In their assessment of Nurming-Por’s proposal, the jury concurred that the exhibition raises important questions about how knowledge is established as well as how artistic practice can produce vital new insight and imagination, particularly relevant within the wider context of Canada’s sesquicentennial and re-examinations of accepted narratives of nationhood.

The Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators is made possible through the support of the Centre Wellington Community Foundation’s Middlebrook Social Innovation Fund, The Guelph Community Foundation: Musagetes Fund, and through private donations. The Art Gallery of Guelph and its sponsors — the University of Guelph, City of Guelph, and the Upper Grand District School Board — acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council, Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Trillium Foundation, and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Curator’s Biography
Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator, writer and educator based in Banff, Alberta. She holds a B.A. Honours in Art History from the University of British Colombia (2011) and a M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto (2013). Her recent curatorial projects include: ARCTICNOISE (2015-2016), At Sea (2015), and Blind White (2015). Her writing has appeared in Drain Magazine, C Magazine, Inuit Art Quarterly, esse, and thisistomorrow. From 2014-2016, Yasmin was a sessional instructor in Art History at Humber College in Toronto. She is currently engaged in the Curatorial Research Practicum at the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will be curating an upcoming exhibition there as well as Video Pool in Winnipeg.