Cross-Border Dialogues: Marcela Guerrero and Tamara Toledo

Tamara Toledo is a Chilean-born Toronto-based curator and scholar and is currently the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery. Throughout her career she has created opportunities for community building and fostered global networks of exchange and solidarity. Her research focuses on hemispheric connections, anti-colonial methodologies, diasporic exhibition histories, and the legacies of the Cold war era in contemporary art. She has curated multiple exhibitions and projects for the past twenty years and her most recent exhibitions include: Diaspora Dialogues: Archiving the Familiar, co-curated with colleague Sarah Shamash and Overcoming Otherness in 2023; The People United and Colour of Women in 2022; and Reimagining Mourning which received a prestigious GOG exhibition of the year award in 2021. In addition, she developed the Latin American Speakers Series (2008-2024) which introduces internationally renowned curators, artists, and critical thinkers to Canadian audiences to discuss issues of power, identity, representation, and intercultural dynamics in contemporary Latin American Art. Her curatorial and advocacy work is clearly exemplified through the development of various projects such as: Art of the Americas: Knowledge Series for Young Audiences at primary and high schools throughout Toronto (2013-2019); mentorship programs for emerging Latinx artists and curators (2016 and 2020); Positionality: Symposium on Latin American and Latinx Art in Canada (2021); and most recently the digital archive of Latin American diasporic artists in Canada from the 1970s to the present, ARCHIVO. Her essays, reviews, and exhibition texts can be found in various publications including ARM Journal, C Magazine, Fuse, Canadian Art, and Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture Journal of the University of California. She has shared her research across Canada, the United States, and Mexico and is currently a PhD candidate in Art History & Visual Culture at York University.