BIO
Faculty
Dr. Carla Taunton
Associate Professor
Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture
CONTACT INFORMATION
Office Number: G224
Phone Number: 902 494 8319
Email: ctaunton@nscad.ca
Background
Dr. Carla Taunton, a white-settler scholar, is an Associate Professor in the Division of Art History and Contemporary Culture at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD) and is the Special Advisor to the VP Academic and Research/Provost, Social Justice and Decolonization. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the department of Cultural Studies at Queen’s and in the department of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University, and also serves on graduate committees at Carleton University and University of British Columbia Okanagan. Dr. Taunton holds a MA in Canadian Art History from Carleton University (2006) and a PhD in Art History from Queen’s University (2011). Her PhD research titled, Performing Resistance/Negotiating Sovereignty: Indigenous Women’s Performance Art in Canada won the Governor Generals Gold Medal in 2012. Dr. Taunton’s research contributes to arts-based critiques of settler colonialism, Indigenous arts and methodologies, contemporary Canadian art and activism(s), museum and curatorial studies, as well as theories of decolonization, anti-colonialism and settler responsibility. She has many national collaborative research partnerships including curatorial and research projects with her GLAM Collective members Dr. Heather Igloliorte and Dr. Julie Nagam, such as SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design led by Nagam (2020) and SSHRC Talent Partnership Grant, The Pilimmaksarniq/ Pijariuqsarniq Project: Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership led by Igloliorte (2018). She recently was awarded the Best Peer-Reviewed Article Award by the Canadian Studies Network for her co-authored essay with Dr. Sarah E.K. Smith in the Journal of Canadian Studies “Unsettling Canadian Heritage: Decolonial Aesthetics in Canadian Video and Performance Art.” She is currently working with Dr. Leah Decter on several collaborative publications on decolonial and critical settler methodologies for the cultural sector, and is a member of the local SSHRC Insight Grant Memory Activism: and Collaborative Processes of Counter-Memorialization (2020) research team led by Sol Nagler.
CURRENT RESEARCH AND/OR CREATIVE PRACTICE
My current research includes:
Memory Activism and Collaborative Processes of Counter-Memorialization, PI Sol Nagler, Insight, 2020: https://www.countermemoryactivism.ca/culturalspacesaslivingmonuments
The Space Between Us: Co(lab)orations within Indigenous, Circumpolar and Pacific Places Through Digital Media and Design, PI Julie Nagam, PDG, 2020: https://www.thespacebetweenus.ca/
The Pilimmaksarniq/ Pijariuqsarniq Project: Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership, PI Heather Igloliorte. Talent PG,2018: https://www.inuitfutures.ca/
The Archive/Counter-Archive: Activating Canada’s Moving Image Heritage, PI Janine Marchessault, PG, 2018: https://counterarchive.ca/welcome
GLAM Collective: https://glamcollective.ca/
Unsettling the Settler Artist: Reframing the Canadian Visual Arts, 1867 to Present,PI Erin Morton, Insight, 2017: https://unsettlingcanadianart.ca/about-unsettling-canadian-art/meet-the-team-2/
Theories and Methodologies for Indigenous Art in North America with Heather Igloliorte, Connections, 2016-going, Routledge Book Project
SIGNIFICANT PUBLICATIONS/EXHIBITIONS
Her recent publications include, “Embodied Resurgence: Global Indigenous Performance,” in the Abadakone, National Gallery of Canada (2020), “Unsettling Canadian Heritage: Decolonial Aesthetics in Canadian Video and Performance Art,” with Sarah E.K Smith in Journal Canadian Studies (2018), “Embodying Sovereignty: Indigenous Women’s Performance Art in Canada,” in Narratives Unfolding (2017), and “Performing Sovereignty: Forces to be Reckoned With” in More Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Performance Art by Canadian Women (2016). She co-edited PUBLIC 54: Indigenous Art, the first special issue on global Indigenous new media and digital arts, and RACAR: Continuities Between Eras: Indigenous Arts (2017). She is currently finalizing with co-editor Dr. Heather Igloliorte, the first Routledge Press Companion on Theories and Methodologies for Indigenous in Canada and United States and is working with co-editor Dr. Leah Decter on a special issue of PUBLIC 63 Beyond Unsettling: Creative responses towards decolonizing future.
Dr. Taunton is an independent curator and was a curatorial team member for Abadakone at the National Gallery of Canada (2019). Recent curatorial projects include: GLAM Collective projects: ebb and flow at Nocturne 2020, Memory Keepers I, II, III from 2018-2019 in Montreal, Charlottetown and Halifax, and gathering across moana in Toronto.