Remembering Indo-Caribbean Legacies through Art

FREE
Zoom program. RSVP Required.

Remembering Indo-Caribbean Legacies through Art 
Tuesday, January 21, 2025, 12:00 pm to 12:45 pm EDT

Explore the little-known histories of Indo-Caribbean indentureship through a feminist and decolonial lens in this digital program featuring ceramic artist Heidi McKenzie and scholar Nalini Mohabir. Deepali Dewan, Dan Mishra Curator of Global South Asia, debuts recent acquisitions to the Museum collections of McKenzie’s work as the panel explores the complex histories of migration and labour, and the impact of each on Indo-Caribbean identity. 

Informed by her family histories, McKenzie’s art uses photography, digital media, and archival information to draw attention to themes of ancestry, race, migration, and colonization, as well as the body and healing. Join us for an exploration of the important role the acquisition of McKenzie’s works will play in the Museum collections representative of diasporic South Asia. 

This program is generously supported by the Dan Mishra South Asia Initiative. 

Speaker: 

Heidi McKenzie

Heidi McKenzie is a ceramic and installation artist based in Toronto, Canada. Heidi completed her MFA at OCADU in 2014. She is informed by her mixed-race Indo-Trinidadian/Irish-American heritage. Heidi uses ceramics, photography, digital media, and archival imagery to build themes of ancestry, race, migration, and colonization in her works, as well as themes of body and healing. Heidi has exhibited internationally in Europe, Scandinavia, Asia, Oceana and the US. The recipient of many grants, Heidi has created in Ireland, Denmark, Hungary, Australia, China and Indonesia. Her work has been collected by ROM, Global Affairs Canada, the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery, and Surrey Art Museum. Heidi’s installation, Division, was invited to tour in the US alongside works of Ai Wei Wei, Theaster Gates, and Magdolene Odundo and she presented a solo exhibition at the Gardiner Museum, Reclaimed: Indo-Caribbean HerStories, in Spring 2023. Heidi was invited to the juried feature exhibition, Common Ground, at the Indian Ceramics Triennale in Delhi, 2024, to present Girmitya HerStories – bringing the Indo-Caribbean diaspora “home.” 

Nalini Mohabir

Nalini Mohabir is an associate professor in the department of Geography, Planning, and Environment at Concordia University. Her research focus in Caribbean Studies begins with indentureship, which she explores through oral histories, literature, art, and archives. She has published in a range of academic journals including Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures and the Americas, Journal for the Study of Indentureship and its Legacies, Wasafiri, and the Journal of West Indian Literature. She is currently working on a collection (together with long-time collaborators Ronald Cummings and Christiana Abraham) about the visualities of protest, based on the Sir George Williams student occupation in Montreal, 1969. 

Deepali Dewan

Deepali Dewan is the Dan Mishra Curator of South Asian Art & Culture at ROM. She is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto, is affiliated with the Centre for South Asian Studies, and is a Senior Associate Fellow at Massey College. She is the co-editor of the online, peer-reviewed journal Trans Asian Photography. Her research spans issues of colonial, modern, and contemporary visual culture, including topics such as art education, decorative arts and historiography.

This Zoom program will feature a 20-minute conversation with the speakers, followed by a live audience Q&A.  Questions may be sent in advance to programs@rom.on.ca.

Please indicate the "Conversations January 21, 2025, Q&A" in the subject line.

All registrants will be emailed a link to access the program 24 to 48 hours in advance.

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