Duncanson Lecture: Wanda Nanibush, "Performing Sovereignty"

The Faculty of Arts & Humanities is honoured to host Wanda Nanibush for the second Robert and Patricia Duncanson Lecture of 2025, held on March 4, 2025. This hybrid event can be attended in person at Conron Hall or online via Zoom. There is no cost for this event; please register in advance.
 
From protest to ceremony to performance art, Indigenous artists are breaking the Eurocentric boundaries between art/culture, tradition/contemporary, humor/ethics, fiction/history, and resistance/creation. In "Performing Sovereignty," Wanda Nanibush reveals how, in the process, new histories of protest and performance are sought, and both become the site of Indigenous sovereignty enacted. Artists such as Rebecca Belmore, James Luna, Lori Blondeau, Adrian Stimson, and Shelley Niro, among many others, are our guides. This shift is Indigenous and artist-led.
 
About the Speaker: Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, Canada. Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of over 80 Indigenous curators, writers and artists for talks and performances that last took place at Venice Biennale and was in Toronto, December 5-7, 2024. She recently won the Toronto Book Award for her co-authored book Moving the Museum, which chronicles some of her groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario as the Inaugural curator of Indigenous Art. She has curated survey, group, and retrospective exhibitions, including: Robert Houle Red is Beautiful (NMAI, Smithsonian, Washington); Rebecca Belmore, Facing the Monumental (2019), (Canada and the U.S) and Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971-1989 (AGO). She will be the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the Ph.D. Program in Art History at CUNY in the Graduate Department of Art History in 2025. She is also part of the curatorial team for Counterpublic 2026, St. Louis’ Triennial. In 2024, Nanibush was awarded The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence.
 
She received her M.A. in Visual Studies from University of Toronto where she has also taught graduate courses. She is Adjunct Faculty at York University. Nanibush has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history, feminism and sexuality.
 
Following Wanda Nanibush's lecture, a reception will be held in rooms adjoining Conron Hall.

Image credit: Shelley Niro