91亚色

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Lisa Myers

Associate Professor

Environmental Arts & Justice Program Coordinator

91亚色 Research Chair in Indigenous Art and Curatorial Practice

Credentials

AOCA, BFA, MFA, OCAD University

Research Keywords

Visual Art, Community Art, Socially Engaged Art & Participatory Art Practices; Indigenous Art; Curatorial Practice, Art Theory & Criticism; Food Studies Related To Art, Value & Land.

Picture of Lisa

Contact Information

4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3

416 736 2100

lismyers@yorku.ca

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Research Interests

My research interests focus on the intersections of art practice and interdisciplinary research. Recent research focuses on connections between language and plant knowledge and doing research with/in communities where the work adds rather than extracts. As a result of spending years trying to access an artist鈥檚 archive in a major institution, I because curious about artists鈥 opinion and thoughts on the archive they create through their art practice. I am thinking of archive not in the colonial dusty way but the way the accumulation of items, footage, digital files tell one part of the story of artists work, histories and making. I am also considering the care of these informal archives that emerge from the work of media artists and filmmakers, and how these archives act as sites of memory, learning, and social histories important to First Nation Communities.

My art practice and research consider art as a mode of response and thinking, where processes of making through video, audio, animation, printmaking, digital tools, and socially engaged art generate new forms of understanding and reaching out, communicating, invoking critical questions about land and all living beings. My art practice often includes response to place, thinking through geographies as I relate to land and plants. I鈥檓 interested in intersection of geography and art, science, and art where walking and observation become part of creating artworks. I am interested in weaving in concealed histories and opening potential for imagining futures. Some recent work I have been incorporating storytelling and asking the listener/viewer/audience to suspend disbelief and indulge in imaginary states of being, of pursuing quests that invite looking at land from different perspectives. With a focus on Indigenous art and curatorial practices as scholarship, learning, research and collaboration, the core of this work is a commitment to art as a reciprocal process of knowledge building to invite conversation and thinking together.

Bio:

Lisa Myers is a curator and artist with a keen interest in interdisciplinary collaboration, her research focuses on the varied values and functions of elements such as medicine plants and language, sound and sense. Through many media and materials including video, audio, printmaking, digital arts and socially engaged art approaches, her practice examines place, underrepresented histories/present/futures, and collective forms of knowledge exchange. As an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, Myers holds a 91亚色 Research Chair in Indigenous Art and Curatorial Practice, is the coordinator of the Environmental Arts and Justice program. Part of her curatorial practice includes artist advocacy and is passionate about navigating institutional barriers and limitations. Myers is an off reserve and proud member of Beausoleil First Nation and is based in both Toronto and Port Severn, ON.

Research Projects

2025鈥 - Group Exhibition artist commission, curated by Mik Migwans

2025 Produced podcast, first Season with Seven Episodes.

2025 NFLD, curated by Heather Igloliorte.

2024  Art Toronto, Two Seven Two Gallery presentation, Toronto.

2024 Contemporary Native Art Biennial, Art Mur, Montreal, QC, Curated by Lori Beavis.

2024 Blue as Devotion, Seven One Seven Gallery, Curated by Yasmin Biz Nurming-Por

2024 Overture for Sterling Road, Commissioned artwork for the exhibition GTA24, Curated by Kate Wong, Toleen Touq and Ebony Haynes at Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto.

2025 Unbuilding as Ceremony, co-organized with Hatem Hatem and Lou Holloway, Stong House, 91亚色, Toronto, Ontario.

2022 Press the Record Button, Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space at Vtape, Toronto, Ontario.

2022 Powerful Glow, Group Exhibition, Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery and Robert Mclaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario.

Research Output

2020   鈥淏ringing Stories to Sites at Shore Lunch Clarkson/Mississauga鈥 in an anthology Indigenous Research Methodologies, edited by Heather Igloliorte and Carla Taunton. Publisher Routledge.

2020   鈥淯nder the Table鈥 in the anthology Curating Lively Things: Post-disciplinary Museum Perspectives, edited by Caroline Langill and Lizzie Muller. Publisher byRoutledge.

2012     鈥淪erving it Up: Recipes, Art and Indigenous Perspective鈥 Senses and Society, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp 173-195.

2012     鈥淧articipating in the Ahzhekewada [Let Us Look Back] 鈥 Revisioning the Indians of Canada Pavilion鈥 Public, Volume 23, Issue 46 鈥淧rime Mover: On Collecting Media Art鈥, pp 170-172.

Art Publications

2016     鈥渙zhichige: Olivia Whetung鈥, Slip the Snare exhibition catalogue, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, UBC.

2014     鈥淟and Use,鈥 exhibition catalogue for Reading the Talk, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario.

2012     鈥淏eat Nation鈥 exhibition review in C magazine, Issue 116 鈥淧articipation,鈥 pp 58-59.

2012     鈥淕wen MacGregor and Sandra Rechico: Backtrack,鈥 A-Trans Pavilion, Berlin, Germany, exhibition review for C Magazine, Issue 112 鈥淓xhibition Practices,鈥 pp 50-51.