Of Africa

Julie Crooks is the Assistant Curator, Photography at the AGO, and her first exhibition in that role was Free Black North (April 29 – August 20, 2017). She received her PhD in the Department of History of Art and Archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where her research focused on historical photography in Sierra Leone, West Africa and the diaspora. Prior to joining the AGO, Crooks curated and co-curated a number of exhibitions in Toronto, including No Justice, No Peace: From Ferguson to Toronto in February 2017, co-curated with Reese de Guzman (co-organized by the Ryerson Image Centre and BAND). Julie is also the co-curator for the Of Africa project at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, where she was awarded the Rebanks Postdoctoral Fellowship to research the various engagements of Black and African audiences with the ROM’s African Gallery, and the photographic history of Blacks in Canada.

Dominique Fontaine is a curator and Founding Director of aPOSteRIORI, a non-profit curatorial platform – researching, documenting, developing, producing and facilitating innovation in diverse contemporary art practices. Fontaine graduated in visual arts and arts administration from the University of Ottawa (Canada), and completed De Appel Curatorial Programme (Amsterdam, the Netherlands).

Her ongoing research: Evidence: Inter-documentation, surveys Contemporary Visual art practices by Black artists, curators, critics, theorists and art historians as a response to a gap concerning the accessibility of updated material on diverse artistic propositions from Africa and its Diaspora. Her curatorial projects include and- in. the light of this.______ Dineo Seshee Bopape, 2017, Darling Foundry, Montréal; “Images, Imageries, Imaginaires” – International Photography Exhibition of the World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures, December 2010, Dakar (Senegal); “Forms and topographies: African Cityscape in flux”, 2009, Thessaloniki Biennale (Greece); “Moshekwa Langa: Unlimited”, Art Star Video Biennial, August 2005, Ottawa (Canada). Dominique is also the co-curator for the Of Africa project at Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum (ROM).

Dr. Silvia Forni is Curator of African Arts and Cultures in the Royal Ontario Museum's (ROM) Department of World Cultures. She is also Associate Professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto. Dr. Forni's research focuses on tensions, dynamics, and feedback that inspires contemporary creators in Africa and the diaspora and the way art challenges the stereotypical constructions of the Western imagination.

At the ROM she has curated several partial gallery reinstallations and exhibitions. Her most recent exhibition project have been Isaac Julien: Other Destinies (2017); Art. Honour and Ridicule: Asafo Flags From Southern Ghana (2016); and Worn: Shaping Black Feminine Identity (2014). Since 2013, together with Julie Crooks and Dominique Fontaine, she is responsible for the Of Africa project, a multiplatform project aimed to support a sustained and long-term promotion of the cultural and creative diversity of Africa and its diaspora through an engagement with the collections in the museum and in dialogue with artists and creators active today.

She recently edited with Christopher B. Steiner the award-winning volume Africa in the Market. 20th Century art from the Amrad African Art Collection. Toronto: ROM (2015) and co-authored with Doran H. Ross Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana (2017).