Cross Border Dialogues: Bana Kattan and Vicky Moufawad-Paul with Nasrin Himada

Bana Kattan is a researcher and curator with experience working in the Arab world and United States. She is currently the Pamela Alper Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA). Prior to her time at the MCA, she was the Curator at the New York University Abu Dhabi Art Gallery, and Researcher to Arab Art Historian Salwa Mikdadi. She received her MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and is a recipient of the Barjeel Global Fellowship (2018-2019) and the Getty-CAA International Program Grants (2015).

Vicky Moufawad-Paul (she/her) is a Toronto based curator and writer. She is the Director and Curator at A Space Gallery. She has curated exhibitions at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Carlton University Art Gallery, Gallery 101, MAI: Montreal arts interculturels, Latitude 53, Museum London, McIntosh Gallery, Contact Photography Festival, InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, A Space Gallery, and 16 Beaver. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Western Ontario and an MFA in Film and Video from York University. Moufawad-Paul has published texts on several artists including Harun Farocki, James Luna, Emily Jacir, Wafaa Bilal, Taysir Batniji, Paul Dennis Miller, Deirdre Logue, Mohammed Mohsen, Jacqueline Hoang Nguyen, Juan Ortiz-Apuy, Basil AlZeri, Erica Lord, John Halak, Rehab Nazzal, Adam Broomberg, Oliver Chanarin, Akram Zaatari, and Yto Barrada.

Nasrin Himada is a Palestinian curator and writer. Their practice is heavily influenced by their long term friendships and by their many on-going collaborations with artists, filmmakers and poets. Nasrin’s recent project, For Many Returns, experiments with writing as an act dictated by love, and typifies their current curatorial interests, which foreground embodiment, desire, transformation, and liberation through many forms. Nasrin currently holds the position of Associate Curator at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Queen’s University in Kingston (ON).