A warm welcome to CIMAM to Emelie Chhangur!
"I have long admired the work undertaken at CIMAM. It is one of the most relevant networks operating today in support of the changing milieu of museum work and an important contributor to transformations taking place in our field. I consider my director role in a dramaturgical way; Agnes Reimagined is a long-term, institutionally-engaged project with the curatorial as its methodology and architecture as its medium. I think the only way this idea will become intelligible within the context in which I work is to be in dialogue with international colleagues who approach institutions as materials to be worked with and worked upon".
Emelie Chhangur, Director and Curator, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Canada.
"As a recently appointed museum director, who is a woman of colour, having an increased international network of dedicated museum professionals is essential to my survival".
In her current role at Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Emelie fights for a community-engaged architectural design process to reimagine new museum architectures that ensure cultural spaces of Canada’s future no longer look like those of Canada’s colonial past.
About Emelie
Emelie Chhangur is a curator, artist, and award-winning writer based in Toronto. She is known for her process-based, participatory curatorial practice and the creation of long-term collaborative projects performatively staged within and outside the gallery context. Chhangur has developed an experimental approach to curatorial writing with an interest in how texts perform to create unique interpretative experiences. Over the past decade, she has been committed to finding inventive ways to enact activisms from within an institutional framework, questioning the nature and social function of the contemporary art gallery through embedded criticality and new methods of gallery "in-reach." She previously held the position of Assistant Director/Curator at the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU), Toronto, and is the founder of the AGYU’s residency program. In 2019, she won OAAG’s inaugural BIPOC Changemaker Award and in 2020, the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence. She has published over 25 books, curated over 150 exhibitions and regularly presents her research nationally and internationally.
About CIMAM
CIMAM – International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art – is an Affiliated Organization of ICOM.* Founded in 1962, CIMAM’s vision is a world where the contribution of museums, collections, and archives of modern and contemporary art to the cultural, social, and economic well-being of society is recognized and respected.
Join today, and take part in our network with over 700 contemporary art museum professionals from 84 countries.
Thank you, Emelie Chhangur, for becoming a member of CIMAM!