Publication_Information

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In Conversation: Sally Frater, Crystal Mowry and Farihah Shah

February 09, 2024 - February 09, 2024

Please join us for a panel conversation stemming from artworks and themes in the exhibition Human Capital, currently on-view in the College Art Galleries, curated by Tak Pham. Panelists include Sally Frater, Crystal Mowry and Farihah Shah.

Friday, February 9th, 2024, 4:00 to 5:30 PM, University of Saskatchewan Convocation Hall, Peter MacKinnon Building

Complimentary snacks and beverages will be available. This event is free and open to the public. It is made possible by the support of the University of Saskatchewan's Art and Art History Visiting Speakers Committee with the support of the Chrones Lecture Series in Art and Art History. 

Please note: Remai Modern will be hosting a curatorial tour of Views from the Blue House: The Remai Modern Collection, led by Chief Curator Michelle Jacques at 7:00 PM. We encourage audience members to attend this event following the panel conversation. 

Human Capital is organized and circulated by the MacKenzie Art Gallery. 

Image: Farihah Shah, selection from Prefix (2016) currently on view in Human Capital.

Panel Contributors

Sally Frater is the daughter of immigrants from the Caribbean. Curatorially she is interested in decolonial praxis, space and place, Black and Caribbean diasporas, photography, art of the everyday, and issues of equity and representation in museological spaces. She has curated solo and group exhibitions for institutions such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Gallery of Guelph, the Ulrich Museum of Art, Glassell School of Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Justina M. Barnicke Gallery at the University of Toronto, Project Row Houses, and Centre[3] for Artistic and Social Practice. She is the senior curator/curatorial manager at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, SK.

Crystal Mowry (she/her) is the Director of Programs at the MacKenzie Art Gallery. She previously held the position of Senior Curator at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery where she oversaw the gallery’s exhibitions, collections, and publishing activities for over a decade. As a curator operating primarily within the context of a public art museum, she treats her role as equal parts co-conspirator and translator, often seeking ways to support artists in the development of new projects. Her curatorial work includes group exhibitions such as I’ll be your Mirror, The Perennials, and What the Bat Knows. In 2013 she co-curated Romancing the Anthropocene, one of the three projects commissioned for the City of Toronto’s annual Nuit Blanche event. Her solo projects with artists Maggie Groat, Ernest Daetwyler, and Deanna Bowen have received Exhibition of the Year Awards from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries (now Galleries Ontario Galeries) and in 2020 she was a recipient of a Waterloo Region Arts Award. Mowry has written curatorial and experimental texts for artist-focused publications on the work of Brendan Fernandes, Shary Boyle, August Klintberg, Annie MacDonell, and others. She lives in Treaty 4 (Regina) with her family.

Photo by Daniella Okezie.

Farihah Aliyah Shah is a contemporary lens-based artist originally from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Treaty 6) now based in Bradford, Ontario, Canada (Treaty 18). She holds a BHRM from York University and a BFA in Photography with a minor in Integrated Media from OCAD University in Toronto, Ontario.

Using photography, video, sound, and installation, Shah’s research and lens-based practice explores identity formation through the colonial gaze, forced migration in relation to labour of goods and services, race, connectivity to land, and collective memory. She analyzes and critiques the photographic canon while building new narratives and archives that narrow gaps within her personal history addressing intersectionalities of her identity: multi-diasporic, female-identified, Black, Caribbean, etc.

Shah was the 2019 recipient of the John Hartman Award, long-listed in 2022 for the New Generation Photography Award, and the 2023 recipient of the CCI x WOPA Fellowship at the Perez Art Museum of Miami (PAMM). Shah is also the co-founding member of Mast Year Collective; an artist duo exploring kinship through collective practice. She has exhibited internationally in Asia, Europe, and North America.

Photo by Sarah Bodri.