Post-Mortem Survey for Making Art Work 2020-21

Caroline Cotter is a visual arts administrator with ten years of experience working in the Ontario nonprofit art sector. For seven and a half years, Caroline worked as the Visual Arts Program Administrator at the Ontario Arts Council. She’s held positions at CARFAC National, Galerie SAW Gallery and the House of PainT Festival of Urban Arts and Culture. Caroline is currently a Master’s candidate in Art History at Queen’s University where her research focuses on cultural heritage preservation, provenance and art restitution. She holds a BFA in Art History from Concordia University and has completed several courses in nonprofit and volunteer sector management at Ryerson University.

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Susan Brogly is a writer, mother and scientist.  Susan has curated art installations in Boston, Saratoga, Montreal, and Kingston, and was a co-organizer of Kingston’s 2017 ON THE WALL street art festival.

Angélique Roy is a Health Sciences Librarian at Queen’s University. Having completed her MA in Art History at Queen’s in 2013, she continued her studies in Library and Information Science and sought outreach opportunities to explore the intersection of art and literacy. This included internship opportunities at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Smithsonian American Art and Portrait Gallery Library and working across special libraries and corporate records management. Originally from the Ottawa Valley, she lived in Calgary for five years before returning to Kingston and is passionate about building community through engagement with local artists and their works.

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Scott Bucsis is a musician, composer and picture editor working in the film and television industry with a specialized interest in sound design and sonic environments.  He has recently been fortunate enough to move to Kingston full-time after being involved with numerous musical projects while in Toronto as well sitting on the Artspace ARC Board of Directors while in Peterborough. Scott is very passionate about the importance of the engagement of the arts with the community and is excited for the opportunity to be part of the amazing work at Modern Fuel.

Grace Dixon is an illustrator, graphic designer and musician with a specific fondness for experimental sound design and artistic collaboration. She has most recently been involved in co-writing an instrumental score for a Toronto-based documentary and finds tremendous beauty and power in pairing sound with visuals. Her visual art practice often includes digital illustrations or textured collage work alongside themes of deconstructing/rediscovering spirituality and leaving space for growth. Grace is honoured to be a part of the Modern Fuel board and is looking forward to opportunities to contribute to, listen to and support this community. 

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Nenagh Hathaway works in the School of Graduate Studies at Queen’s University. She returned to Kingston following a two-year Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Physical History of Art at Yale University and three years as a fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Nenagh received her Ph.D. in Art History from Queen’s in 2016 and her MLitt from the University of Glasgow’s program Making and Meaning: Approaches in Technical Art History in 2011. Her research interests lie in the physical makeup of artworks, from their initial design to their manufacture and, ultimately, how the resulting objects change over time. Her curatorial activities include The Unvarnished Truth: Exploring the Material History of Paintings, an exhibition held from 2015 to 2017 with venues across Canada that was accompanied by a catalogue.  

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Gabriel Menotti is Assistant Professor at the Film & Media Department of Queen’s University. He works as an independent curator in the field of moving image practices and technologies. His most recent books are "Movie Circuits: Curatorial Approaches to Cinema Technology" (AUP, 2019) and "Practices of Projection: Histories and Technologies" (OUP, 2020, edited with Virginia Crisp). Menotti is also one of the coordinators of the Besides the Screen festival and research network, and currently convenes Museum Without Walls, a curatorial survey on virtual museums.

Abby Nowakowski is a queer interdisciplinary artist and educator who frequently works alongside others. Through printmaking, illustration and handpoke tattooing, they work to spread advocacy for care, share stories, and make space for radical softness. Their practice extends into art facilitation with a range of collaborations including workshops, performances, and community weaving opportunities. They currently live and work as an uninvited guest on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabek.

Mehvish Rather is pursuing research in the field of documentary filmmaking. Being a documentary filmmaker herself, with her films being showcased in different film festivals across the globe, she continues to question the methodology and ethics in her field. Her particular interest concerns with the representation of subjects in documentaries based in protracted political conflict zones, trying to envision them beyond the scope of victimhood. She questions the patterns of absences within such documentaries, such as that of humour and transcendentality.

Fan is a PhD Student in Screen Cultures & Curatorial Studies at Queen’s University. They have previously served as Board Secretary at Art Metropole. Their own practice intermixes poetry, performance, and community participation; they are particularly passionate about breaking down artificial barriers that divide various forms of creation. A perpetual question for them: are there ways to rethink “institutionality” at its root that preserves the good work the institution has done while transforming sedimented structures that no longer reflect an organization's values? They hope to assist in Modern Fuel's process of decolonization. 

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