2017 Visiting Curator Series (Visual Arts Market Access): Call for Submissions

The third edition of ELAN‘s Visiting Curator Series will take place on October 22 – 23, 2017. English-language artists in the Montreal and West Quebec regions are invited to apply to be included in the tour.

Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts, ELAN’s Visiting Curator Series is designed to create links between Quebec artists and cultural centres outside Quebec, with the goal of increasing career opportunities and market awareness. In 2015 and 2016, professional curators and gallery owners from New York and Boston spent three days visiting art studios, speaking at a public panel discussion, and sharing their knowledge of global art markets with local artists.

For the third edition of the project, three curators from NYC and one from Toronto will view Montreal and West Quebec artist’s work. Approximately 10 artists in total will be selected. The confirmed curators for 2017 are:

Alex Fialho (Programs Director at Visual AIDS, Research and Curatorial Associate Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and frequent contributor to Artforum),
Emelie Chhangur (Assistant Director/Curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) and independent curator/writer)
Larry Ossei-Mensah (NYC independent curator and cultural critic, Co-Founder of ARTNOIR).

The curators will present on strategies for artists to get their work seen and exhibited, observations of the art markets they participate in, and their own curatorial practices at a networking event on Sunday October 22 (location TBA).

The selection of artists will again be juried by a panel of professional art jurors. The jury will consider the quality of the artist’s work, and aim for a broad spectrum of representation and cultural diversity in their selection. Artists are invited to submit their names for consideration and must be available on Monday October 21st or Tuesday October 22nd for a studio visit (should you not have a studio and/or prefer to have a discussion about your work outside this environment it can be arranged.) Travel and accommodation subsidies will be provided to artists chosen from the Western Quebec region to attend the talk and networking event and to meet with the curators to look at their work.

If you are working in any medium of the visual arts, would like a studio visit, and consider your work ready for export and exhibition, please submit your application with support material according to the guidelines here.

Deadline Extended: Monday, June 12, 2017

Land Acknowledgement

ELAN is an official minority language organization within a country that recognizes two languages as official. ELAN is located in Tiohtià:ke, the original name for Montreal in Kanien’kéha, the language of the Mohawk—also known as Mooniyang, which is the Anishinaabeg name given to the city by the Algonquin. While we are based in this city, our projects have also taken place in many regions across Quebec.

We acknowledge the colonial origin of English and French in Canada, and recognize that both languages benefit from official status throughout the land. The province that we know as Quebec is an amalgamation of the traditional territories of the Innu and Inuit nations, Algonquian nations, as well as the Mohawk nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Kanien’kéha and Anishinaabemowin are but two of the original languages of this province; Atikamekw, Cree, Inuktitut, and Innu-aimun are also among the many Indigenous languages spoken across Quebec as majority languages, all well before French and English.

ELAN acknowledges the important work being done by First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples to revive the traditional languages of these territories, and their advocacy for the official status of Indigenous languages.