Our Students

Acey Rowe is documentary radio producer with a small pile of broadcasting awards to her name. She is the host and editor of The Doc Project on CBC Radio and podcast. An incoming MA in Art History and Curatorial Studies, her research examines contemporary art that uses the tools of documentary journalism to interrogate macro power structures: confronting economic and socio-political injustices, bearing witness, and inviting viewers to contemplate their own role within these economic and political systems. She holds a BA in Media Studies from Ryerson University.

Research interests: Imperial and transnational visual culture, British settler colonialism, Establishment of Canadian cultural institutions on British models (1860-1914)

3^rd year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture

Andrew Bailey’s current research functions to critique how the field of game studies has used formalist art history as a method to legitimize video games as a new artistic medium. His dissertation comparatively looks at the videogame art of Bennett Foddy and Cory Arcangel; Nina Freeman and Angela Washko; and David OReilly and Ian Cheng.

4^th year PhD Candidate, Art History and Visual Culture

Caitlin O’Keeffe is a PhD student in Art History and Visual Culture at York University. Her current research focuses on feminist art, ideologies of home and the politics of place and space within contemporary art. Caitlin holds an MA in Art History and Visual Culture from York University, and an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Simon Fraser University.

Catriona Reid is an incoming MA Art History and Curatorial Studies student whose research interests include cartography, studies of the Anthropocene, and strategic marketing for art galleries. She is especially interested in how eco art can be used as a tool for enacting social change, particularly in regions prone to environmental resource extraction, exploitation, and political unrest. Having worked for various not-for-profit and commercial galleries, Catriona is excited to advance her career in curation, marketing, and cultural management. She holds a BA in Art History from McGill University.

Danie Klein’s research investigates the traumatic autobiographical narrative presented by artist-activist Joseph Beuys as well as his legacy of trauma and unreliable narration found in contemporary ecological art movements.

Using Arte Povera, Emma Bain will examine modes of exhibition and participation in and around galleries and events prior to the institutionalization of the arte povera artists. Her focus is on a few innovative sites of display and collaboration: L’Attico Gallery (Rome 1966-1977), Arte Povera + Azioni Povere (Amalfi 1968) exhibition/happening, and Michelangelo Pistoletto’s artistic collective known as The Zoo. These three points of interest represent three separate geographical contexts for art production; a commercial gallery within the epicentre of economic and cultural production, an exhibition in a marginalized sea-side village, and finally, nomadic. Through researching these unique modes of dissemination, we can perhaps build a model for the future by looking to the past.

Eric’s research investigates the way in which museological spaces—and the visitor’s corporeal experience therein—have been and continue to be impacted by epidemics such as COVID-19. It considers both institutional history and architectural intent, as well as broader notions of museums as instruments of biopower and necroeconomics, positing them as prime sites for contagions to aggravate the plague of body politics and social othering.

2^nd year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture

Eva Lu’s research is in conceptual art and East Asian decolonialization and diaspora. Currently, she is investigating the use of emerging technologies in the work of contemporary Taiwanese, Japanese, and Korean artists, and the consequent challenges arising from these new conceptualisations of form, including the implications for institutional collecting and exhibiting, the construction of hybrid identities, the figuration of the Asian subject, and transnational visual culture.

2^nd year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture

Frances Dorenbaum is a curator studying the history of photography. She was born in Toronto, traditional territory of the Anishnabeg, Chippewa, Haudneosaunee, Huron-Wendat, and Mississaugas of the Credit, which is covered by Treaty 13. Her current research focuses on settler-colonial representations of Canadian national identity in twentieth-century news photographs. She has collaborated on exhibitions in museums, galleries, and DIY spaces.

1^st year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture

Margaryta is interested in how gender, particularly the notion of womanhood, is constructed by social and economic factors. Her current project examines the female subjects in the commercial posters of Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha, questioning who these posters were meant to appeal to and how one might characterize the women in them: as modern and threatening women, or as idealized apparitions.

Megan’s research situates the 19^th century stained-glass of Newfoundland’s Anglican and Roman Catholic churches within their historical context. Her work examines these windows as identity-forging objects that not only served to connect Newfoundlanders to Europe but were used to define their relationships with other Newfoundlanders.

2^nd year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture

Melissa completed her MA in Art History at Carleton University, specializing in women artists in early twentieth-century Canada. Her current research focuses on the Heliconian Club, a Toronto-based organization for professional women in the arts. She hopes to bring more attention to lesser-known Canadian women artists and is passionate about engaging the public through new and exciting interpretations of Canadian art and history.

Michelle is passionate about Modern and Contemporary art that raises questions, and is fascinated by female monsters. Intrigued by what monsters tell us about the cultures in which they are created, Michelle’s investigation focuses on the monstrous body as the ‘other’, as the ‘category-crisis’, and as the simultaneous ‘attractive/repulsive’. What does Western popular culture deem monstrous or grotesque, and why? She is excited to delve into works by artists such as Rebecca Belmore, Diane Arbus, Barbara Kruger, and Meret Oppenheim during her studies. As an incoming MA student, Michelle looks forward to shaping a solid foundation of research with dreams of pursuing doctoral studies in the future.

Natalie’s research interests include nineteenth-century Canadian architecture, Medieval architecture, and sensory studies. Her current work is focused on the career of Montreal architect Alexander C. Hutchison (1838–1922), documenting his body of ecclesiastical architecture, and articulating the significance of sensory considerations to the process of designing Protestant churches in Canada during this period.

4^th Year PhD Candidate, Art History and Visual Culture

Natalie MacLean is a 3^rd year student in the dual MA/MBA program. Her research focuses on contemporary installation art, how economic factors influence programming in art institutions, and how arts organizations measure success.

Peter’s research examines the structure, size, and trajectory of the Inuit art market. His research aims to understand if from an artist’s perspective the market is financially sustainable in its current form.

Quinn Venable is interested in learning how various curatorial techniques can impact the way an audience engages with an exhibition. What is considered a meaningful experience when digesting contemporary art and how do we ensure this feeling is transferred from artist to observer? She is an incoming MA student in York’s art history program.

Scarlett is an incoming MA student using her professional theatre background to examine the art of Yayoi Kusama. Through a theatrical lighting designer’s lens, Scarlett asks how lighting impacts Kusama’s art installations.

Shivhan Szabo is an artist and goldsmith residing in Toronto, ON. She is an incoming art history and curatorial studies MA student with an interest in material culture and craft. Her research focuses on consumer behaviours regarding handmade goods, particularly as a response to mass production and planned obsolescence. She holds a bachelor of design from OCAD University in material art and design.

TAMARA TOLEDO is a 3^rd year PhD student. She is a co-founder of the non-profit arts organization, Latin American Canadian Art Projects, and is the Director/Curator of Sur Gallery. Her current research focuses on the work of Latin American diasporic artists in Canada who have been shaped by violence, trauma, and displacement while following decolonial practices that defy hegemonic tendencies within contemporary art.

Vanessa is exploring whether homecrafts are an effective means for assessing the positions that women have historically taken on questions of land and nature. She is testing her method on three embroidered quilts made by English women who lived in southeastern Ontario during the nineteenth century. Vanessa’s dissertation relates these quilts to contemporary ecological concerns by showing that their floral embroideries were informed by the industrial revolution, natural science, and colonialism.

5^th year PhD student, Art History and Visual Culture