The Orion
Lecture Series in Fine Arts

Through the generous support of the Orion Fund in Fine Arts, the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Victoria, is pleased to present:

Heather Igloliorte

Research Chair, Circumpolar Indigenous Arts

7:30 – 9:00 pm (PST) Wednesday, March 10 2021

Free & open to the public via Zoom

Presented by UVic’s Department of Visual Arts
For more information on this lecture please email: visualarts@uvic.ca

Advancing Indigenous knowledge

Dr. Heather Igloliorte (Inuk, Nunatsiavut) holds the Tier 1 University Research Chair in Circumpolar Indigenous Arts and is an associate professor in the Department of Art History at Concordia. She also serves as the special advisor to the provost on advancing Indigenous knowledges, and in this role contributes to the efforts of the university’s Indigenous Directions Leadership Group. Her teaching and research interests center on Inuit and other Native North American visual and material culture, circumpolar art studies, performance and media art, the global exhibition of Indigenous arts and culture, and issues of colonization, sovereignty, resistance and resurgence.

Indigenous futures

Heather is the principal investigator of the $2.5M, seven-year SSHRC Partnership Grant “Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq/ Pijariuqsarniq Project” (2018-2025), which aims to empower circumpolar Indigenous peoples to become leaders in the arts through training and mentorship. With Professor Jason Edward Lewis, Heather also Co-Directs the Indigenous Futures Cluster (IIF) in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology. Through Milieux, Igloliorte works with collaborators and students to explore how Indigenous people are imagining the future of their families and communities.

Heather has been a curator for 14 years, and currently has three exhibitions touring nationally and internationally; she is also the lead guest curator of the inaugural exhibition of INUA, the new Inuit Art Centre at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Heather publishes frequently: she has co-edited special issues of journals PUBLIC 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital (2016) and RACAR: Continuities Between Eras: Indigenous Arts (2017), and her essay “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum,” was awarded the 2017 Distinguished Article of the Year from Art Journal.

Igloliorte currently serves as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Circle for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, working on the development of the new national Inuit Art Centre; is the President of the Board of Directors of the Inuit Art Foundation; and serves on the Board of Directors for North America’s largest Indigenous art historical association, the Native North American Art Studies Association, the Faculty Council of the Otsego Institute for Native American Art History at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation, among others. Heather has previsously served as an executive member of the board of directors for the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective and as the president of Ottawa’s artist-run-centre Gallery 101, in addition to other advisories, juries and councils.

About the Orion Fund

Established through the generous gift of an anonymous donor, the Orion Fund in Fine Arts is designed to bring distinguished visitors from other parts of Canada—and the world—to the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Fine Arts, and to make their talents and achievements available to faculty, students, staff and the wider Greater Victoria community who might otherwise not be able to experience their work.

The Orion Fund also exists to encourage institutions outside Canada to invite regular faculty members from our Faculty of Fine Arts to be visiting artists/scholars at their institutions; and to make it possible for Fine Arts faculty members to travel outside Canada to participate in the academic life of foreign institutions and establish connections and relationships with them in order to encourage and foster future exchanges.